HouseCanary, a U.S.-based fintech firm focused on providing a real estate analytics solution, announced on Wednesday it has reviewed 41 states with the highest listing and transaction volume in the weeks since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. economy.
According to HouseCanary, potential homebuyers were faced with challenges when viewing or closing on properties and tracking sales became difficult as county recording offices closed due to cities and states enacted stay-at-home or shelter-in-place orders. The fintech observed:
“HouseCanary’s broad multiple listing service (MLS) participation allows us to evaluate listing data and aggregate the number of new listings as well as the number of new listings going into contract for all single-family detached homes observed in the HouseCanary database. We were able to track listing volume, new listings, and median list price for 41 states.”
HouseCanary further reported in a review of weekly single-family detached homes, new-listing volume was down month over month in all 41 states being tracked. Weekly new-listing volume is down by more than 50% compared to the same period one month ago in Louisiana, Florida, Connecticut, Delaware, Colorado, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Additionally, weekly contract volume for the single-family market is down by more than 50% compared to the same period last month in California, Nevada, Delaware, New Jersey, Wisconsin, New York, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Jeremy Sicklick, Co-Founder and CEO of HouseCanary, went on to add:
“This data shows in real-time the impact that COVID-19 is having on the housing industry as we come into the Spring buying season that is historically the strongest buying season for real estate.”
Founded in 2013, HouseCanary describes itself as a real estate technology company that provides what it believes to be the most accurate home valuation to drive “smarter decisions” across the real estate ecosystem.
“We have assembled the most comprehensive dataset in the residential real estate industry, drawing from over 200 individual databases. Combined with our sophisticated machine learning models, which understand the relationships between property value drivers, we can determine the current and future valuations for 100 million residential properties and deliver insights that empower our customers to make the smartest decisions about their real estate investment assets.”
The National Association of Realtors revealed on Tuesday the existing home sales occurred at a seasonally-adjusted annual pace of 5.27 million. The organization revealed that a major reversal from the month prior, which featured the strongest sales figure for the month of February since 2007.
The organization further observed that while sales have declined, home prices are still solidly strong. The median existing-home price for all housing types in March was $280,600, up 8.0% from March 2019 ($259,700), as prices increased in every region. March’s national price increase marks 97 straight months of year-over-year gains. It was then noted that total housing inventory at the end of March totaled 1.50 million units, up 2.7% from February, but down 10.2% from one year ago (1.67 million). Unsold inventory sits at a 3.4-month supply at the current sales pace, up from three months in February and down from the 3.8-month figure recorded in March 2019. The organization added:
“Individual investors or second-home buyers, who account for many cash sales, purchased 13% of homes in March, down from both 17% in February and 18% in March 2019. All-cash sales accounted for 19% of transactions in March, down from both 20% in February and 21% in March 2019.”