Another year is behind us. That means it’s time to for the 2017 year in review. We look back and reflect on the previous year and then think about what the next year will look like. In the Summit County real estate market 2017 was an active year and my initial thoughts are 2018 will continue with more of the same. Let’s take a deeper look into the 2017 numbers and see how we came to those conclusions.
2017 residential sales were up 5.4% over 2016 with 1984 sales in Summit County. Monthly sales fluctuated with some months better than 2016 and others falling short. Overall the increases won out.
2017 had $1,385,947,000 in residential sales. That’s up 23% from 2016’s sales volume of $1,124,067,000. Some of that increase came from a 46.6% bump in the number of sales over $1million. In 2016, sales at $1million or more only made up 11.8% of the total sales. In 2017 that number jumped to 16.5%. In fact, the 70 sales at $2million or more nearly doubled the 38 sales in 2016.
Average residential sales price in 2017 was $698,562. That is a 17% increasefrom $596,006 in 2016. The increase in higher end sales certainly impacted the average sales price but values increased across the board.
The number of cash buyers in the market is about the same year over year at just under one third of all buyers. The low interest rates continue to make borrowing more attractive, even to those that have the means to pay cash.
59.8% of homes sold in the first 30 days in 2017. Homes were still selling quickly in 2016 with 54.8% under contract within 30 days.
Summit County has been suffering with low inventory for a couple of years now. We currently have just 319 homes on the market in the entire county. That’s only a 2 month supply on average. A balanced market would see about a six month supply. We are definitely in a strong Seller’s Market.
Condos and townhomes made up 63.8% of the residential sales in the county. Currently, they only make up 41.3% of the inventory.
Low inventory is going to be the strongest force driving the 2018 market. If inventory levels continue in similar fashion in 2018, we can expect prices to continue to increase. There is still demand, even now during a typically slower time of year. There is no indication that demand will slow into the coming year.
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