Twin Cities home buyer activity is still substantially lagging last year at this time. For the last 5 consecutive months we’ve seen home showing activity down approximately 40% versus the same time last year.
Twin Cities Showing Activity
How well do showing appointments correlate with sales? Very, very, very well.
Since showings happen before offers (usually!), they provide us a little bit of a leading indicator into future sales activity. Pending homes sales have been down about 40% each week since mid-May and showing activity really slowed the last week of April, which suggests about a 3 week lag time before the Pending numbers reflected the diminished showings. Since most properties are only Pended after inspections have been completed and the listing agent turns in all the paperwork, this lag time seems reasonable.
What does all this mean for us? Well it looks like the coming weeks will continue to see Pending Sales down significantly from last year. What I find a little comforting is that while buyer activity is down significantly, it has been very consistently hovering at the same level for the last 5 months… to me that suggests we are at a fundamental level of home sales activity… before a market can climb it has to hit bottom, right?!?!
