Every few months, we like to review and contextualize the latest Greater Albuquerque Association of REALTORS® quarterly statistics for you, especially as they provide a wider perspective of market trends than month-to-month reports.
Once again, it's very pleasing to be able to tell you that the recently published third quarter figures reaffirm the general positivity we've been seeing all year.
A key highlight is that, in July, August and September, single-family detached home sales showed a year-on-year increase of 6.34%.
The average sale price of those homes rose by 3.32%, compared with the third quarter of 2015, to $228,271. Indeed, if we look back to 2014, we can see that average prices have risen by just under $10k in that time frame. This is good news for homeowners, in terms of growing equity, and also positive for buyers, as prices are clearly rising in a quite sensible and relatively undramatic manner, and not eating significantly into affordability, despite a shortage of homes for sale.
It's also taking less time for homes to be on the market before they sell. Single family detached homes in the Greater Albuquerque area, for example, on average took 10 days less to sell than in Quarter 3 2015 (a 17.24% drop to 48 days).
The biggest falls in days on market occured in Rio Rancho, by 38.71% to an average of 38 days for detached properties, and by 32.35% in East Mountains, down to 69 days from 102 in comparison with July, August and September of last year.
Inventory of available homes for sale continues to be a key focus in our market and the news from these latest stats is that Q3 reflected a pretty neutral situation, with a very, very slight 0.96% year-on-year increase in new listings.
In some ways, we can take a little comfort from the new listings in as much as we didn't see the quite significant 25.54% year-on-year drop experiencenced in Quarter 2. Time will tell if the trend will get better or worse, but at least for now we seem to be in a holding pattern.
In conclusion, these latest figures are another robust statement of the health of our market, which has the double advantage of offering worthwhile incentives to both buyers and sellers, with low mortgage rates continuing to be a major influence on overall market characteristics.
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