Source: Wikipedia.
The real estate market in Fresno is showing similarities to what’s going on in many major cities around the country right now – less inventory and rising prices. There are nearly a quarter fewer homes listed for sale right now compared to last year and with fewer homes available prices are rising and homes are selling faster. This is by far a seller’s market in Fresno at the moment, but how long will it last?
Inventory Goes Down, Prices Go Up
A year ago today there were a healthy 801 homes listed for sale in Fresno whereas today that figure is 611. So that’s an inventory of 611 homes available on the market, signifying a huge drop of 24 percent from last year. If we’d discussed last month’s figures it would have been an even bigger drop – there were only 559 homes listed this time last month, so at least the figures have improved by 9 percent. This lower inventory is a trend that we’ve been seeing in Fresno for a couple of years now, but with the latest rise of 9 percent from last month, maybe that trend is finally reversing.
The past two years have also seen a steadily rising median list price, and judging by today’s figures that particular trend is not about to reverse! One year ago the median list price was $183,000 and today it’s a staggering 32 percent higher at $241,950. A rise if 32 percent in a year is huge and markets can’t usually sustain increases like that. Today’s figure is even a 4 percent rise from last month, when the median list price was $231,900.
A slightly more accurate way to compare rising house prices is the median price per square foot as this irons out any differences between size and type of home listed from month to month. Even though the rise hasn’t been quite so astronomical as 32 percent it’s still a massive 18 percent difference from last year’s figure of an even $100 per square foot, to today’s figure of $118. Interestingly, this is actually a 1 percent drop from last month’s median of $119 per square foot.
Get Your Homes While You Can!
Real estate is selling very quickly in Fresno, which tends to suggest the market is still able to support the rising prices. This time last year the median days on market was a healthy 43. This would be considered fast in many of the nation’s cities, but today it’s even faster. The median time a home is taking to sell is just 36 days, so that’s a 16 percent drop from last year. But, the median has increased slightly (by 6 percent) from last month, when the median days on market was only 34.
All this activity could be a result of coming into the busier summer period, or it could be because buyers are starting to panic a little with prices climbing so much in Fresno. The city is definitely experiencing a seller’s market right now so buyers should either hold off and hope things calm down a little, or take the plunge and buy now with the assumption that prices will only rise further.
Mortgage News Not Much Better
The mortgage news isn’t much better for buyers in Fresno as rates are continuing to rise in California like they are in the country as a whole. The good news is that mortgage rates are still below what they were this time two years ago, and in fact rates have only just gone past the level they were at this time last year. The general trend has been to rise since the low point in Californian mortgage rates at the end of 2012, but the question is: how much farther will they rise. Today’s California mortgage rate was 3.86 percent which is 2 basis points higher than the national average of 3.84 percent.
