Current Trends

I have always been a numbers person! I love watching how our website ebbs and flows and trying to figure out what people are looking for in the Madison housing market. The picture you see here depicts the most popular pages on our website over the last 7 days.

As you can see, people are seriously looking for a home in the Schenk, Atwood and Marquette neighborhoods. And then when it comes down to the top 10 we have a lot of lookers on Lakes Monona and Mendota.  This trend has been happening all summer long and part of the reason is that the inventory in these neighborhoods has been sparse and when homes or condos in these places go up for sale they are gone within a matter of days, if not hours. So how does this affect you as the person reading this little piece about how I love numbers?

The numbers explained

When we dive further into these numbers what we find is that there are serious Buyers, even now, for homes and condos.  You will often hear agents or consumers speak about how slow the Madison housing market is when the Fall arrives and how it remains like that until the end of February. This has long been a myth and truly needs to be debunked. Right now in the Atwood neighborhood, we have a 1.5 month absorption rate. What does that mean? Well, if no other homes were to hit the market right now we only have enough homes to last for the next 45 days. In the Marquette neighborhood, we have an inventory that lasts 90 days. On the lakes? 120 days!!!

Why are these numbers important? They give us a sense of where we are when it comes to being in either a Buyer’s or a Seller’s Market.  Anything below 5 months of inventory or 150 days reflects a Seller’s Market.  When inventory starts to last over that 150 day mark it means that we have moved into a Buyer’s Market.

Conclusion

Bottom line is that based on the numbers and the field study from our agents we definitely have a need for more inventory and chances are great that you will be looking at getting top dollar for your home even if you decide to list in the Fall or Winter. Serious Buyers are still in need of housing in these specific areas and because there are very few homes to select from, you, as the Seller are in a great position!

Want to find out more about how your home fares in the current Madison market? Be sure to contact Mark to sit down and discuss what your next steps are.

From the desk of Mark Gladue