RED REPORT – 4th Quarter 2020
Middle TN Home/Condo Sales Report for End of Year 2020.
The Red Forecast
Wow! Middle Tennessee is amazing. The local residential real-estate market has rebounded and surpassed 2019’s record year. Looking back at March/April, I was ready for another huge recession that was different than anything we’ve ever seen with a whole different set of issues. Thankfully, that concern was wrong and we were spared what could have been a terrible year.
With closing volumes up 6% and prices up 12%, I think we can say that 2020 was a great year on the real-estate front despite all the bad news around other issues.
National economists think that 2021 will be even better than 2020 because they expect the economy to improve creating more jobs and more demand for housing. One BIG issue we have is inventories are at an ALL TIME LOW of 2.3 months. There are many opinions, but I think 4-5 months is good for a healthy market. Whatever your opinion is, most agree 2.3 months is way too low. Inventories at the end of 2020 are 44% less than they were at the last peak 2006 market when sales volumes were less than they are today. Days on Market have also gone from 43 in 2006 to 24 days in 2020
I don’t like to predict too much, but I’ll go out on a limb and predict that prices will go up in the near term. There are several reasons home prices could go down, but I think the crazy low inventories combined with an improving economy adding more jobs are a recipe for demand to be very strong which has to increase prices.
Many will say “we are going to outprice the market” and I would say in some areas, that may be true, but looking at the overall Middle TN market, prices are still very affordable compared to other markets in the United States. So, we not only have a diverse growing economy here locally, but we have a large number of homebuyers moving here from out of town markets that are priced much higher so our prices still seem very affordable to them causing even more demand and reason for prices to increase.
We live in the best community in the world. The love that our community has shown our family over these difficult two months of our lives, missing Jean Alyne, has been overwhelming. We are all a better community because of the love she gave to others and you all showed out in a huge way loving us back. THANK YOU!!!
Someone shared this great quote: “When we lose someone we love, we must learn not to live without them, but to live the love they left behind.” Anonymous
Our community, family, friends and Red Realty are all better because of the love Jean Alyne gave us. She would share with us today that “we should all live like there is no tomorrow with no regrets as we plan to live in eternity”.
Thank you,
Steven Dotson
President
*Reminder: Pendings are new contracts that are waiting to be closed in the near future, usually 4-6 weeks out.
