Housing market in balance in some counties, way off in others
If you're trying to sell a home, you might want to move it to Montgomery County.
Economists generally say supply and demand is in balance if it would take six months for all the homes currently for sale to find buyers at the current pace. More months and buyers have the edge. Less, advantage sellers.
Montgomery stood at about 5.5 months in February, lowest in the state. Do the months' supply calculation for pending deals -- this is normally a busy time of year for contract-signing -- and it drops to just over three.
Call it the Washington effect. Maryland counties with the lowest inventory compared with sales and contracts are all Washington suburbs, either officially (like Frederick and Prince George's) or unofficially (like Howard and Anne Arundel, which send as many commuters south as north).
Counties at the other end of the spectrum are largely on the Eastern Shore. Garrett, in far Western Maryland, had the highest months' supply no matter how you cut it -- sales (more than 70 months) or contracts (just over 40 months).
Here's a chart showing pending deals, inventory and how they compare for February:
| Jurisdiction | Pending sales | YoY chg | Inventory | YoY chg | Months' supply |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Montgomery | 899 | 39% | 2,838 | 5% | 3.2 |
| Frederick | 243 | 20% | 1,187 | 4% | 4.9 |
| Howard | 228 | 6% | 1,154 | 4% | 5.1 |
| Prince George's | 950 | 55% | 4,980 | 15% | 5.2 |
| St. Mary's | 91 | 36% | 593 | -5% | 6.5 |
| Anne Arundel | 475 | 33% | 3,150 | 1% | 6.6 |
| Charles | 146 | 25% | 996 | 4% | 6.8 |
| Harford | 226 | 26% | 1,569 | 2% | 6.9 |
| Baltimore County | 526 | 17% | 4,052 | 11% | 7.7 |
| Washington | 118 | 49% | 932 | -5% | 7.9 |
| Calvert | 96 | 71% | 789 | -4% | 8.2 |
| Baltimore City | 576 | 37% | 4,761 | 3% | 8.3 |
| Carroll | 115 | 21% | 1,003 | 7% | 8.7 |
| Allegany | 45 | 55% | 440 | 6% | 9.8 |
| Caroline | 30 | 88% | 353 | -2% | 11.8 |
| Cecil | 65 | -2% | 843 | -9% | 13.0 |
| Queen Anne's | 39 | 86% | 578 | -4% | 14.8 |
| Wicomico | 55 | 8% | 817 | -11% | 14.9 |
| Dorchester | 24 | 41% | 419 | -10% | 17.5 |
| Worcester | 129 | 50% | 2,260 | -9% | 17.5 |
| Somerset | 13 | -13% | 269 | -20% | 20.7 |
| Talbot | 27 | 0% | 560 | -3% | 20.7 |
| Kent | 14 | 180% | 320 | 5% | 22.9 |
| Garrett | 16 | 33% | 653 | -2% | 40.8 |
| MARYLAND | 5,146 | 34% | 35,516 | 3% | 6.9 |
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Comments
interesting numbers, i'm surprised that the average maryland county is only around 8-9 months of inventory. after looking around last spring/summer/fall, it seemed like half the houses we saw had been on the market over a year, so i would've guessed supply was around 12-15 months.
just think about the absurdity of this situation--many decent houses, which needed only cosmetic changes, routinely sit on the market for a year. that just seems absurd to me. what a terrible time to sell, and an especially terrible time to sell if you purchased within the last 8 years or so. i've purchased 2 years but haven't sold one yet (i rent out the extra) and the idea of having a house on the market for so long that you lose hope just seems absurd to me.
one point, re: your stats-- if "inventory" doesn't include foreclosures (even foreclosures the banks aren't listing yet, i.e. shadow inventory) then the numbers are skewed. i'm not sure if your numbers include such inventory...
Posted by: chappy10 | April 9, 2011 12:48 AM
Hi, chappy10 -- Montgomery and Prince George's are so large that their low months' supply figures are pulling down the state's overall. (Also, the chart shows months' supply calculated from February pending deals -- February's closed deals are lower, given the time of year, but I figured people might like to see the in-process stuff.)
Inventory is the number of homes listed for sale, whether bank-owned, short sale or non-distress. It doesn't include "shadow inventory" because those homes aren't listed yet -- and there's no simple way to get at that by county. (Last I checked RealtyTrac foreclosure figures, they weren't catching everything.)
There's also another sort of shadow inventory to consider -- homeowners who want to sell but are waiting for a better time to actually list. That's REALLY tough to quantify.
Posted by: Jamie Smith Hopkins | April 9, 2011 8:33 AM