When it comes to the local real-estate market, it seems that life’s a beach – and everyone currently is there.
Home-showings across the Washington region for the week ending July 14 were at their lowest level since the very onset of the COVID pandemic in 2020, and were less than one-third the market peak in the post-COVID rebound.
Those figures come from Bright MLS, which reported that for the seven days ending July 14, there were 17,136 showings across a catchment area that included the District of Columbia; Arlington, Fairfax and Loudoun counties and the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax and Falls Church in Virginia; and Montgomery, Prince George’s and Frederick counties in Maryland.
The figure was up 6 percent from a week before – a week that included the Independence Day holiday – but was off 29 percent from a year ago. And it stood at less than half the showings recorded for the commensurate weeks in 2020 and 2021.
The initial blast of COVID in March 2020 sent the local real-estate market into a brief tailspin, resulting in March and April of that year having the lowest total number of weekly showings over the past five years.
But within months, and aided by technology (and masks), home showings both in-person and virtual built up steam. By the spring of 2021, with the local market going full blast, typical weeks saw more than 55,000 showings across the region.
Showings reported for the week ending July 14 were lower than similar weeks over each of the past five years. But a summer decline is typical – and, equally typically, there is seldom a significant bump upward until the start of a new year foreshadows the arrival of the spring buying season.
Also from the report:
For the week ending July 14, a total of 1,531 properties went to market, up 12 percent from a year earlier.
The median listing price for those homes ($619,900) was not an all-time high, but was close – and was up 4.2 percent from the same week a year before.
Despite the high listing prices, nearly one in 10 (9.4%) of sellers reduced their asking prices during the week across the region, a significant spike that seems in line with the current, cooler level of activity.
And 215 sellers canceled their listings for one reason or another, a major spike from a year earlier.
New purchase contracts for the month stood at 1,223, down 11.2 percent from the same point a year before.
Figures represent most, but not all, homes on the market. All current figures are preliminary and subject to revision. See the full data at brightmls.com/marketupdate.
