How did the Greater Philadelphia real estate market do in the 3rd quarter? Our Senior Economic Advisor, Kevin Gillen, analyzed the data to answer that question in his latest regional housing report.
Dr. Gillen’s full commentary and slide deck are included below, but here are the key takeaways from our perspective:
- Suburban price gains have outpaced the city’s price gains in only 3 of the last 21 quarters, and home prices in the city continue to grow at a more rapid rate.
- The city continues to experience a prolonged seller’s market with 3.5 months of inventory, while the suburbs are seeing a balanced market with 5.2 months of inventory.
- Despite relatively low inventory levels, transaction volume remains high. Regionally, 23,206 homes were transacted in Q3 which is the most in a 3rd quarter since 2005, and the highest overall volume since Q2 2006 other than the previous quarter in Q2 2017.
These regional trends correspond with the market conditions Houwzer has observed across the nearly 300 deals the brokerage has closed year-to-date.
We’ve seen a very tight and competitive market in the region this year – a continuation of what we saw happen in 2016. However, we’ve started to notice the urban condo market and the suburban markets shifting towards buyer's markets.
The majority of our current pool of over 100 active buyers are waiting for their desired inventory to open up in the city, whereas we have generally been able to find suburban buyers new homes more rapidly. This year, we’ve seen 32 of our urban listings sell with fewer than 7 days on market, 9 of which sold to Houwzer's buyer pool who were ready to go when the right inventory became available.
As always, we’ll continue to keep our eyes on the data and report back whenever we see a changing tide, but until then we encourage you to check out the complete report (below) which contains a multitude of data not covered in this summary.
Philadelphia Regional Housing Market Commentary (Q3 2017)
Philadelphia Regional Housing Market Slide Deck (Q3 2017)
Have any questions or comments? We’d love to hear from you.
