Real Estate Market Update September 15, 2022

Ryan Haley, broker and owner of Atlantic Shores Sotheby's International Realty is back for another real estate market report for the Week of September 15, 2022. 

It’s hard to believe, but we are right into the thick of things with our fall real estate market at the beach and Worcester County, Maryland. 

Local Real Estate Market in Worcester County

Let’s take a look at the local numbers that we are seeing in the Worcester County real estate market. 

For the past seven days, we have seen a total of 61 new active listings, along with coming soon listings. So, 61 new properties hitting the market in the last seven days. 

When we compare that to the pending and active under contract sales over the course of the last seven days, we are actually seeing more going under contract than coming on the market. We saw 69 properties go under contract in the last seven days. 

If you recall last week, we had more listings come on than properties going under contract, but I mentioned that it was still fairly balanced. This week, it's gone the other direction. It's back to a situation where the demand exceeded the inventory. 

We still need inventory here at the beach. If you've been considering selling—I've mentioned this time and time again—we are still at the pinnacle of the seller's market, especially this fall. So, if you're thinking about making that move, you're going to be able to stand out and ahead of the competition right now with the way the market is going. 

At the same time, we saw 38 properties reduced in the last seven days, while last week we saw 27 reduced. The price reductions were in line with what we saw before, where people who've listed a little earlier in the summer maybe got a little too aggressive on their list prices, but the buyer demand just wasn't there. Thus, they have had to make those price reductions to get it to a level where the buyers are now excited to buy. 

As for total inventory in the county, currently, we have 303 properties for sale in Worcester County. In the last 30 days, we've seen 183 properties go under contract, so that means that we have just under a two-month supply in total or less than two months’ available inventory. That means that if nothing new came on the market today, within two months, we would sell out of everything we have based on the current demand as long as it remained constant.

State of the Real Estate Market Across the Country

Now, let’s switch to the national market and bring in something that kind of relates to what we're having here locally, and that is, inventory. 

As mentioned earlier, we have just under two months’ supply here in Worcester County, but when we look nationally, the inventory trend has continued to rise. 

In fact, currently, we have 3.3 months’ supply of inventory nationally. Here in

Worcester County, we actually have less inventory, which means our market is a little bit more robust, a little bit more active than what we're seeing nationally. 

Keep in mind though that anything less than six months of inventory is still deemed to be considered a seller's market. You'll hear that from any national economist who specializes in real estate that less than six month supply is a seller's market. 

But one thing needs to be said… in a seller's market, or in an rising inventory environment, the advantage still goes to the buyer. If you started with two months’ supply, demand decreased and inventory increase, and those months supply continues to increase, even though you could be below six months, the advantage goes to the buyer. 

So, keep an eye on that. 

We'll have to see what goes on here in our local market because every real estate market is local. You can listen to the national headlines which do more to terrify than to clarify, but what's most important is talking to somebody local who really knows what's going on with our local real estate market here at the beach.