This is your monthly real estate market update for Anne Arundel County, Maryland, with James Bowerman and the Real Creative Group of Douglas Realty.
Let’s take a quick dive into a few of the metrics for Anne Arundel County’s housing inventory.
Homes Coming Soon to Anne Arundel County
233 homes coming soon to the market within the next 21 days, which is up over last month.
Right now we have 233 homes coming soon. That means they will be active on the market within the next 21 days or so. This is slightly up from last month and that’s a good sign with inventory being so low. When a home has “coming soon” status, it is only visible to Multiple Listing Service (MLS) subscribers (usually agents and their clients).
Active Listings
714 properties are currently active for sale on the market.
When a home is actively listed, it’s available for showings and sale at that time. The seller is marketing the home and is looking for the best offer they can get. In this current market, we see offers come in rather quickly. So working with an agent that’s in touch with the area in which you want to buy your home is key. Being responsive to any new listings can mean the difference between your offer being considered and submitting it too late.
Currently, we have about 714 homes actively for sale on the market, which is up about a hundred compared to last month. During the warmer months, we expect the number of active listings to go up. However, when we compare this month’s numbers to last year, we have almost 50% fewer homes on the market.
Homes Under Contract
1,966 homes are under contract and no longer available to tour or purchase.
When a home is under contract that means you can’t go tour these properties anymore. The seller has accepted an offer from a buyer and it should close within about the next 30 to 45 days.
Now, this is up about 5% over the last month, and it’s actually up about 14% over this time last year. So many homes are going under contract and the supply can not keep up with the demand of all these home buyers.
Homes Sold In Anne Arundel County
1,1114 homes sold during the month of May.
The “homes sold” metric is exactly as it sounds. It’s the number of homes that have sold in a given timeframe. 1,114 homes sold during May. This is a 7% increase compared to the 1036 homes in April overall.
It’s a 49% increase over the 745 homes we saw this time last year. So year to date, we’ve already sold about 4,824 homes in Anne Arundel County.
In 2020 a little over 11,000 homes were sold in Anne Arundel alone. At the Real Creative Group, we believe we’re on pace to do that, and maybe even surpass last year’s home sales. This is despite the low inventory.
Why is the Demand for Housing So High?
Let’s be honest. The ramifications of the pandemic hit the housing market square in the face. Many people experienced lifestyle changes. We have more people working from home, and pandemic or not, that’s going to continue at least part-time for many folks. Which means they’re reevaluating their space needs. They may need one or two office spaces in their home to accommodate this shift in their work arrangements.
If someone has shifted to working from home full-time, then they may consider selling and moving out of state if their work previously kept them tethered to this area.
And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the still incredibly low-interest rates. This makes mortgages really affordable. Low-interest rates mean lower payments.
Months of Inventory
We currently have less than one month of inventory.
This means that if no new homes were listed for sale, we would run out of inventory in less than a month. Months of inventory is calculated a few different ways, but it relates to the market’s sales pace as well as available inventory compared to different points in the past. For months of inventory, we take the total number of active listings from the previous month and divide it by the total number of sales for that same month. This allows us to estimate the number of remaining months of inventory.
Anne Arundel County, MD Average Time on Market
The average time on market in May was 15 days, while the median was only 5 days.
We’re seeing a lot of multiple offer situations due to the high demand and low supply. Buyers are putting in their best and highest offer and waiting to see which offer the seller picks. This is a tough situation for buyers. Alternatively, some buyers are swooping in with time-sensitive offers. The buyer presents a strong offer and attaches a decision deadline to it, reducing the likelihood that they’ll face a ton of competition for this home.
Let’s take a closer look at these numbers. The average time on market was 15 days for the homes that sold in May. That means some took longer than 15 days and some took way less. The median is actually a better indicator of the speed at which homes are flying off-market.
The median time on market is 5 days. That means that while some homes must have been listed for much longer, they’re largely outliers. The median is the middle score of a number set. That means in order for the middle score to be 5, there had to be plenty of homes that went off market sooner than 5 days as well.
If you see a home sitting for longer than a week, you’ll likely see a price reduction. If it continues to sit, that’s a signal that the home may be overpriced; it may need some work. There could be an opportunity if you’re a buyer in this market.
Anne Arundel County, MD Average Home Prices
The average sold price in May was $498,322.
At nearly $500,000, the average selling price is 1.9% over the list price. However, when we look at home prices last year, the average was $429,322 which is 16% lower than this year. So we can conclude that based on the demand, homes are being priced higher than they were last year.
These numbers change from month to month and can inform your strategy as a home buyer or homeowner in Anne Arundel County.