DC Area Home Sales Drop in July As Inventory Returns

• August 11, 2014

by UrbanTurf Staff

New home for sale in Mount Pleasant.

The volume of home sales and new pending contracts fell in the DC region last month versus July 2013, according to RealEstate Business Intelligence’s July report out Monday. The volume of homes that have sold and gone under contract has now dropped for every month in 2014.

While both sales metrics are lower than last year’s levels, it is important to remember that 2013 was one of the hottest years for the region’s housing market in the last decade. To put this year’s numbers in a little different context, closed sales and new pending contracts this year are higher than 2010, 2011 and 2012.

As sales activity has slowed, inventory is getting back to healthy levels:

Active listings in the Washington, DC Metro Area increased 33.5 percent from last July to 11,119 listings. Active listings have now increased from the prior year for ten months in a row and have reached their highest level of any month in nearly three years.

While the housing inventory for the region has increased by approximately 3,000 listings since last summer, it remains approximately 57 percent lower than its peak in 2007.

Here are a few other takeaways from the report:

• The median home sales price for the region is $428,000, a 0.7 percent increase from last year and the highest July-level for the region since 2007.
• The median days-on-market metric increased year-over-year by five days to 17, still well below the 10-year July average of 29 days.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dc_area_home_sales_drop_in_july_as_inventory_returns/8851