Real Estate Market Recap for October 25, 2022

Ryan Haley is back with the real estate market report for October 25th, 2022.

Status of Worcester County, Maryland Real Estate Market

Worcester County is our coastal county here, which includes Ocean City, Maryland and Berlin, all the way down to Pocomoke at the southern end of the county to the Virginia line. What we saw here in the last seven days is that we had 47 new properties hit the market. That's a combination of coming soon and listings that just came on in the last seven days. At the same time, we had 42 properties go under contract during that period of time, so that’s just a few more listings than we had contracts over the course of the last seven days.

We also saw 33 properties that were reduced in price this week to try to attract more buyers to ultimately get that property sold. 

What does it mean for our entire higher inventory? 

Currently, we have 329 properties for sale in Worcester County while at the same time we sold 139 over the course of the last 30 days. This gives us a 2.36-month supply, just under two-and-a-half months supply of inventory here in coastal Maryland. 

Sussex County,  Delaware Real Estate Market

As you know, Sussex County is a little bit larger county, so we always have more properties for sale in Sussex than we do in Worcester County. But just to give you some context, we had 146 new listings come on the market over the last seven days, while at the same time, 130 have gone under contract. So, yes, we did add 16 units to our inventory over the course of the last seven days when you take out the pendings. But it is still a fairly healthy market. 

We are still seeing a lot of activity, with people trying to obtain that beach or coastal property just before the end of 2022. We see that from a tax strategy standpoint. Some folks have to move some money around and/or want to diversify, so we're seeing a good amount of activity here in October locally. 

When we look at the entire county, we've got 1407 properties for sale. Keep in mind that a good chunk of that is new construction property, some of which has not even been built yet. 

In total, active in the MLS are 1407 properties for sale, while at the same time, we had 381 properties go under contract over the course of the last 30 days which gives us 3.69 months supply. So, that’s about an extra month supply in coastal Delaware

National Market Status

What's happening nationally? What are some of the headlines that we're seeing nationally?

This is one that we're hearing not just in the real estate world but also in the overall economy, and that is that we're coming into possibly recessionary times. There's a possibility that we'll be heading into a recession. Dating back to 2008 when people think of housing and a recession, they think of the global housing meltdown that we had in 2008, which is completely different than what we have now. That's what our memory takes us back to and the context that many of us had, and we are certainly not in those times. However, we do anticipate that we're going to be going into a recession if we're not already there. 

Many global CEOs are saying that they believe that we will have a relatively short-lived and soft recession but then feel very confident over the course of the economic outlook over the next three years or so. What's another thing that happens typically in recessions is that mortgage rates have a tendency to come down. 

These are some of the things we're hearing in the national news this week. Yes, we're probably going to go into a recession at some point. We're still going to have homes that sell. 

In fact, they're predicting about 4 million homes will sell in 2023, so there's still going to be a lot of activity. It's just that the economic times and mortgage interest rates will remain high in the near term. But then, in a recessionary—and this goes back over the last six recessions—we've seen an average of 1.8-percent decrease in mortgage interest rates. 

So what does this all mean? It means that history has proven that the word “recession” can be scary, especially from 2008, but ultimately, recession does not necessarily mean housing crisis. In fact, housing is most likely going to be one of the shining stars and strong elements that carry us through the possibility of an upcoming recession.