February saw increasing sales of existing properties as certain buyers, especially those with more income, are maintaining the upper end of the market alive and thriving.
February’s home sales increased generally by 4.2% to a 4.26 million pace. If sales occurred at the same pace in every month as they did in February, then the total number of properties sold over a year would be The figures have seasonal adjustment.
Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, remarked in a press call: “The figure for February [was] better than what I anticipated.”
From the same month a year ago, home sales in February fell 1.2%. The NAR also pointed out that the calculation considered the leap year that gave February 2024 an additional day of business—that February was a day shorter this year than last year.
Sales moved faster than analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal had projected. In February, they project house sales to drop to a 3.95 million pace.
February saw rising home prices.
The NAR noted that February’s median price for an existing house was $398,400—a new high for that month.
Nationally, home prices increased 3.8%. In the Northeast, which is usually a more supply-constrained market, prices surged 10.4% in February. An existing house in the Northeast had a median price of $464,300.
Compared to 15% a month ago, nationally 21% of properties were sold above list price. Houses got an average of 2.3 offers.
Related: In a market where homes are selling for $620,000 over asking price, how are consumers winning bidding wars?
Up from 41 days in the previous month, listed houses stayed on the market for 42 days on average.
Of sales, all-cash customers accounted for 32%. Of all the investors, or second-home buyers, sixteen percent were individual ones.
Thirty-one percent of properties sold to first-time home purchasers
Furthermore exposing a significant difference in sales based on the price point of a house was the NAR statistics. While sales of homes costing $500,000 and lower dropped annually, the number of homes sold for more than $1 million increased 11.5% in February compared with the same period a year ago.
Just 7.6% of American homes sold were over $1 million; 18% of homes sold fell between $500,000 and $750,000; and 45% of homes sold fell between $250,000 and $500,000.
Among the purchasers who helped to generate that statistic are Lauren and Nick Schulz. Following the sale of their house in Raleigh, N.C., in mid-January, the couple bought a $1.35 million house in Charleston, S.C.
Having moved from New York City during the epidemic, they had bought the Raleigh house in November 2020 for $570,000. Five years later, they chose to relocate to Charleston, the dream city they had always wanted to call home. “We always wanted to ultimately retire here,” Lauren Schulz remarked. “We’re in our late 30s and wondered, why not?” Since the pair can work remotely, they were free from concern about commutes.
The four-bedroom Raleigh house had five bids and sold for $55,000 above the advertised price when the listing agent put it on the market. The sale yielded a 3% commission for Raleigh-based principle agent Nico Crecco of Compass.
Crecco reported, “The luxury market is holding up well.” He ascribed the market’s strength to a flood of consumers from other, more costly regions outside North Carolina.
“Buyers are coming to Raleigh with highly paid jobs and seeking a better quality of life,” he remarked, “and are happy with how far their dollar goes here.”
“The luxury end has consistently outperformed the other price categories throughout last year,” Yun of the NAR remarked.
However, “the wealthy, upper segment of the households have large exposures to the stock market,” he said, and given the markets have just turned bad, that’s something to keep an eye on.
“With the stock market correcting, we will see whether or not… the top-end market continues to outperform the lower-price categories,” Yun said.
