Albuquerque’s Real Estate Market: It’s still frantic out there!
(Transcript Snippet): ” Tego:
It’s still pretty frantic out there in the real estate market. Is that a fair word?
Tracy:
You know, Tego? I didn’t think we were going to talk about this, but let me tell you about Wednesday this week. Right? So we had, well, Wednesday and Thursday, we had four open houses, midweek for homes that had just gone on the market with us. I’m on two, three of them were in the Northeast Heights. And one was in far Northwest. We Rio Rancho on Thursday from four to six. Okay. And the Wednesday three open houses. I was at one of them and other agents from the team were at others. The house I was at had over a hundred visitors now, individual groups. Sometimes it was one person, three people formed with their realtors. Some without some have realtors, but were on their own, whatever, just coming to see the open house. Well, and it was
Tego:
The first time in and we’ve been doing this, right? Yeah.
Tracy:
It was the grand open house. First time anybody could see it. Yeah. I’m sure we had over 60 individual, not individual, 60 groups of people through. I mean, it was well over a hundred people at the house that I was at. The house Jane was at same thing over a, well, over a hundred people through that open house. Corey held a house open on Saint. She’s the one who started this conversation among our team. And she was like, we had over a hundred people there. I’m sure of it. So her seller went to the ring doorbell and literally counted all of the people. And the seller says they had 500 people through their house that day. Corey said it was crazy. And luckily one of our title reps stopped by to give her some bottles of water to hand out and he stayed. So she wasn’t there alone. But even though one in Northern Meadows, which is far Northwest Rio Rancho, you have to want to go there. You don’t run into those signs. Right. The reason
Tego:
That one was in such high demand is it was, it was a lower price point. And definitely below the median, you know, our median is now up over $250,000. So,
Tracy:
So in any event she was exceptionally well attended as well. So what, what does that mean? We still have a lot of buyers in the market. A lot of people looking for the right house. Yep. And you know, it’s interest rates are low. There’s a lot of reasons we talked about them last week,
Tego:
As demand has not dropped off,
Tracy:
I would say in our market, based on this week and the number of showings we’re having on houses, we’ve listed, demand is not dropping.
Tego:
And the reason I say it that way, I’ve seen a lot of national stories lately where they’re talking about, oh, it’s starting to slow down. Or the, you know, number of homes on the market is starting to grow substantially, stuff like that. We’re, we’re seeing a little bit of increase in the number of homes on the market, but it’s still nothing significant.
Tracy:
So take a last, we talked, I think maybe there were around 900 houses on the market, in our MLS. Where are we at right now
Tego:
As of today, just over a thousand. And that’s in Metro Albuquerque. That’s not the entire MLS because I don’t want to look at grants and Santa Fe and some of those other markets. So, you know, just Metro Albuquerque, it’s about, it’s just over a thousand homes. And to give you an example, you know, earlier in the week, I think it was Wednesday when I looked, it was about 900. So it ebbs and flows every week. You know, number of homes coming on, number homes going on,
Tracy:
But we haven’t been over a thousand for a long time.
Tego:
No, we, we really haven’t done that. That is kind of, you know, a, a milestone. The thing that’s curious about that, and I’ll be curious to see here in the next few weeks to a month, what happens? It’s very common that this time of year is when we peak in the number of homes for sale in the Albuquerque area and starting, you know, August, September, it starts to drop off all the way through till usually February that’s normal seasonal trends.
Tracy:
So what we know this date opened up this month, July just a week or so ago, right? Just over a week ago. And the last year COVID right. We had this huge drop-off of people putting their homes on the market. So this August, September won’t be the norm compare. I mean the August and September from last year, won’t have been the norm statistics, but we have 30 years of data. Right. So generally we see things start to pull back a little bit, but we don’t expect that to happen this year. Well, I mean, with the state opening up and people feeling like they can get their house on the market and have it shown and yeah, I
Tego:
Think, I think the takeaway Tracy, is that, yeah. Okay. We’re going to get a little variable. We might get a little increase in the number of homes on the market. The thing is, this is still a very, very strong seller’s market. Right. And it kinda doesn’t matter what price range you’re in. You know, there’s always going to be those anomalies where, you know, there’s just something about the home that makes it difficult to sell, but for the most part, everything is selling. If it’s in the right price range,
Tracy:
Right. For the condition and location. Yeah.
Tego:
And this way it keeps saying, I’m going to say it again. We could have 4,005,000 homes on the market and a greater Albuquerque area tomorrow and still be in a balanced market and not, not in a, not in a buyer’s market. So
Tracy:
One of the things that you talked about at our team meeting was home builders and how many houses they could build a year and still not be caught up to the demand nationally. That was a national
Tego:
Number. So, so let me just back up a little bit, the national association of realtors did a, a recent study and let me pull it up here. I wasn’t ready for it. Sorry.
Tracy:
I just, I think it’s really interesting. Well, it’s, it’s,
Tego:
It really tells the, of our housing market. And we’re going to get to this story in the Atlantic here in a minute to just we’ll skim on it because we don’t want to get too crazy politically. And it’s the Atlantic too. I know listeners of Kiva probably go in the Atlantic. You believe anything from the Atlantic, but actually they, they really hit some really good points about the housing shortage nationally. But what happened was national association of realtors brought in a consulting group to do a study of, you know, what’s going on in United States with housing and what they found, it was actually not too difficult to figure out was you have so many what they call household formations, right? Basically people that are starting a house that are buying a house in, in the number of houses needed is, is one number. Your next number is how many homes were actually built. Right. And what they’ve calculated is that I forget the timeframe. I think it was 10 years that the United States overall nationwide, we are not, excuse me, there’s no timeframe involved with this. I’m sorry. We are somewhere between four and a half and 5 million homes short of what we could use for the demand that’s out there. And then what they said was if, if we were as a country in the entire country to build 2 million homes a year, it would take, what was the stat
Tracy:
10 years, 10 years
Tego:
To get back to, you know, what the demand is calling for. So we haven’t
Tracy:
Had to 2 million homes built a year in a very long time, or no, since 2004, since 2004. So it’s the peak of the building years. And so to 2 million a year would take 10 years to get caught up with the shortage of the homes on the market in this year.
Tego:
I think they’re talking, maybe we’ll have a million nationwide. I believe that was the number if I’m not mistaken. And so to bring that back down to local, yes, I know these are all national stats and national data. The thing is we’re seeing the exact same things here in Albuquerque. We know that there’s way more supply than there are, excuse me, way more demand than there are buyers. We know that then there are for sale. Then there are for sale, man. I’m just saying that all wrong, talking fast. I know. And, and we know, you know, based on talking to builders and developers, that they’re just not able to, to bring product online as fast as the demand calls, right.