“Tepid” may be the best word to describe the current state of the Virginia homes market, as a lack of inventory is holding back prospective buyers.
The springtime market “is off to a slow start,” said Ryan Price, chief economist for the Virginia Realtors’ trade organization.
Indeed: The 8,709 homes that went to closing across the commonwealth in March marked the first time March’s sales total had been below 9,000 since 2016. The 2023 total compares to 11,446 in 2022; 12,171 in 2021; 10,698 in 2020; and 9,891 in 2019.
Parts of Northern Virginia, the Williamsburg area, Hampton Roads and south-central Virginia experienced declines.
On the plus side are two factors:
• March’s sales were up 34 percent from February, suggesting that seasonal market trends are not being disrupted even as total sales are sluggish.
• The tight inventory that is holding back sales also is, to a large degree, helping to moderate what otherwise might have become a major decline in prices.
Statewide, the median sales price of all homes going to market in March stood at $370,000, down $5,000 (or 1.3%) from a year before and down from a peak of more than $400,000 last spring. That said, the median sales price was above, if slightly, the median $365,000 for the full first quarter of the year.
Confused by it all? Join the club.
“Virginia is seeing some mixed signals,” Virginia Realtors’ president Katrina Smith said of the situation. “The median home price has fallen slightly, but buyer demand has somewhat shielded prices. Active listings are staying on the market longer, but fewer listings are coming available.”
The result, Smith suggested, would be a spring market that ultimately could go into the record books as both slower than usual, and more challenging for buyers trying to land a home.
(That seems right: The number of pending sales in the pipeline in March, 8,537, was down nearly 26% from a year before, suggesting no magic turnaround in the short term.)
Those relatively few sellers that are out there seem to have acclimated themselves to current conditions; in March, the sold-price-to-list-price ratio climbed above 100 percent for the first time in six months, suggesting sellers are pricing competitively and buyers are willing to go above and beyond to land a deal.
But consummating those deals is taking time: Homes that went to closing in March spent an average 35 days on the market, up 11 days from a year before.
For the first quarter, sales across Virginia totaled 8,709, down 24 percent from 11,446 at the same point a year before.
