What did COVID do to the the local Real Estate Market?

As most of you know, or if you don’t you should. Adam loves the statistics. And as he always likes to brag that the statistics sheet that is published by the MLS and printed in the paper was designed by Adam. The problem with answering questions about “how is the Market” is the only way you know realistically is looking back on it. Statistics are retrospective. Even though Adam figured out a way to make real estate statistics able to predict the future, he needed the help of a couple of large corporations. And after 3 years banging his head against that wall, he gave up.

So we are now 4 months into the pandemic, so there is data to look back on and see what happened to the real estate market. And the numbers are both surprising, and logical. There seems to be a real story here that can be told.

It is simple…and it is across the board. Or mainly across the board. And here it is in 3 bullet points.
Sales are down
Inventory is down
Prices are Up

~ Unless you are in Ashland, where prices have been declining for the past year.
(Jacksonville and Shady Cove also “show” a decline in median prices, but those two markets tend to be very up and down when only looking at 3 months of data. There are not enough sales, and houses are either $200,000 or $800,000. So I’ve learned to not put too much weight in those numbers.)

This mimics what Adam has seen in his appraisal practice. He has been doing negative adjustments for time in Ashland for the last several months.

These are significant numbers too. Sales across Jackson County are down 29% over last year.
And even more striking is that the number of available homes to purchase are down over 45%.

And with that county wide, the median price of homes has increased by 5%.

This is why this is logical and tells a story. Inventory has gone down more than sales have gone down. This decreases the supply which according a most economics methods increases the price. Compare this to 2007-2009. Sales went down…but inventory of houses kept going up. So the prices went down.

With this market, people stayed home. Wanted to stay home. Didn’t want people in their houses. So many people who may have wanted to sell in a normal year decided not too. But people who wanted to buy homes still wanted to have their own sanctuary. This is part of why it looks like rural properties have seen such a demand. The desire to have a sanctuary where you couldn’t hear your neighbor sneeze got more pronounced.

Rural property sales only declined by 12% and their inventory decreased by over 47%. This ended up netting an increase of prices of almost 11%.

Here is how other towns have faired:

Ashland:
Sales down 48%
Inventory down 34.5%
Prices down 5.3%

East Medford:
Sales down 30%
Inventory down 46.9%
Prices up 3.7%

West Medford:
Sales down 12%
Inventory down 50%
Prices up 4.3%

Central Point:
Sales down 18%
Inventory down 48.1%
Prices up 6.9%

Talent/Phoenix:
Sales up 5.5%
Inventory down 41.5%
Prices up 6.3%