While Summit County real estate activity ended 2019 with a bang, it began 2020 with a whimper. December 2019 saw 230 real estate transactions in the county, a number that fell 42 percent in January to a mere 134 sales. That figure trailed January of 2019 by 3 percent and was the lowest January results since 2016.
Dollar volume experienced a similar fate. In December of last year, dollar sales totaled $181.6 million. For January of this year, the figure only reached $98.8 million, a decline of 46.5 percent. Versus the January 2019 number, dollar sales were down 13.1 percent.
It is hard to find a single source for the poor results. However, it could be that the strength in December stole some sales from January.
Our source (Land Title) tallies average selling prices (ASPs) on a year to date basis and thus we only have one month of data. The single family number is a little eyebrow raising coming in at $1,069,346 down from $1,262,929 for all of 2019. But again the sample size is too small to read too much into that number. The ASP for multi-family homes was somewhat more reassuring. At $629,329 this figure was up 18.7 percent from last January and 12.4 from all of last year. Again, we would expect this swing to moderate as the year progresses.
Sales mix for the month followed a familiar pattern. Low end sales continue to run well below historical norms with properties under $500,000 accounting for only 27 percent of sales. The other notable observation regarding the mix is that there were no sales over $2.5 million.
Inventories appear to have bottomed and were up 5 percent from the prior month. Year over year inventories are up 21 percent with all that gain coming in the multi-family category. Multi-family listings are up 36 percent while single family properties for sale are down 3 percent.
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