Housing Market Feels the Effects of Wintertime's Chill

Zip Realty reports:

Heading into one of the slowest times of year in the real estate market, it’s no surprise that median sales price growth has slowed, while the median days homes spend on the market have risen. Although still in the healthy double-digit range, price growth in the 24 metros analyzed in ZipRealty’s Housing Trends Report dropped to its lowest level of the year at 11.3%. As of Nov. 30, the median sales price was $266,524. Yet in spite of this cooling off, western metros continue to outperform other regions in price growth, with, [o an annualized basis] Sacramento (+30%), Las Vegas (+30%) and the San Francisco Bay Area (+24%) leading the pack.

“We’ve just started to see that homes are also staying on the market longer, which may give buyers a bit of breathing room in what’s still a competitive housing market,” said ZipRealty CEO Lanny Baker. Of the homes analyzed in the report, the median days on market [came in at]  37, a 16% year-over-year decline. Homes were selling at their fastest pace in mid-July of this year, when the median days on market for a home in ZipRealty’s study averaged 27, and the median selling period has now lengthened by about [...] one-and-a-half weeks longer on the market. “Metros on the West Coast, where we saw homes selling at a very rapid rate earlier this year, are now experiencing some of the biggest increases in median days on market,” Mr. Baker noted. Markets with the largest increases in median days on market year-over-year as of Nov. 30 include Phoenix (+65%), Sacramento (+50%) and the San Francisco Bay Area (+9%).