The Housing Market Wakes Up

• March 16, 2012

by Shilpi Paul

Our recent heat wave and budding flora don’t just serve as reminders of the imminent Cherry Blossom Festival: our housing market is also about to wake up from its winter hibernation.

Readers know that the housing market ramps up in the spring. If you’re interested in digging deeper into the patterns, Trulia Trends (previously known as Trulia Insights) just published an extensive seasonal analysis.

Jed Kolko, Trulia’s Chief Economist, analyzed five measures — search activity, asking prices, new construction starts, existing home sales, and housing inventory — using data from Trulia, the Census, the National Association of Realtors, and the Department of Numbers. Check out this awesome chart:

Courtesy of Trulia Trends

From Trulia Trends:

What do these patterns tell us? Homebuyers are a little ahead of sellers. Asking prices peak at the start of the season, so demand appears to rise ahead of supply. As supply catches up, prices ease back down and sales peak. After that, inventories build up a bit further through the summer.

In the District, Kolko tells UrbanTurf, our inventory peaks in June and July, following the national seasonal pattern. Our asking price pattern varies slightly, with a later peak and a dip in August, a month of rest (and extreme humidity) for most of the city.

Harsh weather, unsurprisingly, affects the buying season. With our mild winter and early spring, we’ve heard from local real estate agents that DC’s housing market got busy a little earlier than usual this year.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/the_housing_market_wakes_up/5297