March Weather Effects on April Sales

After a strong start to the year with the light winter conditions, it would appear the heavier winter weather of March did have an effect. With 80 total sales in April we were actually 4 sales behind last year. Last year sales, because of the huge winter were 22 fewer then 2016 or almost 25%. Now it might not all be weather related either. Inventory continues to struggle which makes finding the right home as a buyer more difficult. Affordability also has to be factored in since interest rates have moved higher along with home values. Demand remains strong, but it is still restrained by inventory and the value perspective. Overpriced properties sit, while well priced properties sell in days.
 
I rarely get in to real specific numbers about our market, but I thought for this month it might be fun. Why you ask? How about the fact we had a $40,000,000 (yes that is forty million dollars) sale on the West Shore of Tahoe in April. How does that effect our average sale price, how about April average sale price was $1,845,830 vs March at just $1,140,586. Just, how funny is that to say about values over a million dollars. That sale also impacted the median sale price for April moving it to $811,111 from $705,000 last month. Currently there is another sale in escrow at $10,950,000. Even that amount will impact our median and average when it closes. This is again why I don’t put a lot of emphasis on those numbers from month to month. Oh, I forgot to mention $40M sale was all cash. Go figure!
 
How do things look going in to May? Some areas are doing better than others for available listings. The basin is similar to last year, Squaw/Alpine is down by a third, Greater Truckee is down by 20% and Tahoe Donner is off by 15%. This may not seem too bad until we compare to 2016. Remembering we were still under significant snow this time last year we are now well out of the snow and inventory is still lagging. Today’s inventory compared to 2016 is down nearly 40%. Area by area it is 41% in the basin, 55% in Squaw/Alpine, 40% in greater Truckee and 17% in Tahoe Donner. Another number I do watch closely is the total pending sales in the MLS system. Currently it is at 180 pending sales which is not bad. At this point in the year we should be over 200 so I will be watching that number moving forward.