Melissa Ballman:
Hi, this is Melissa Ballman and I’m a real estate agent here in the greater Salt Lake City area. So what that means, if you’re looking at making a real estate move, I’d love to connect with you, shoot me a text, send me an email, do what you got to do, but get in touch with me. But first today I want to give you an October market update of 2022 and take a look at the numbers that are being reported to utahrealestate.com. Now, that’s mainly the Wasatch front, just so you know, but it could include sales that are reported from St. George, Park City, you name it. So let’s jump into it. Okay. So first thing that I want to point out are these October 2022 numbers here. So these are all based on average prices for all of the Utah market that reports to utahrealestate.com.
And for our October Market Update 2022, we have just over 25 units sold, 25 homes sold. You can see our average sold price was just over $599,000. And take a look at this, this was the average original list price, was almost $645,000. So really $45,000 less than what people were listing their house for is what was actually sold. So about 93% of the list price to the sales price. And you have your average square feet here, average price per square foot, average number of bedrooms, bathrooms. But take a look at the average days on market 46.
So that, and I will show you here, that is going to be similar to what we saw at the beginning of COVID lockdown. So you’re talking not as far back as March, March of 2020, but towards the beginning phase. So we’ve had a significant drop in the number of units sold. Going into winter we always expect that things to slow down and not as many homes sell during the fall and the winter months as you do typically see in the summer. But take a look at this. October of 2021, 43, almost 4,400 units sold compared to 2,500, almost 2,600 this October.
We were still pretty busy right here, 23 days on market compared to now 46. The thing that I want to point out too is how far back is it that we’ve had in October as slow as this October of 2,500. I’ll say 2,600 just to round up, just to make it easy, 2,600 units. Well, it was definitely not last October. I want to show you, it was actually in 2011 that we had that few of units sold in an October. So let me scroll up here. Here we go. 2,480 units sold in October of 2011, and our average days on market was 123 days. Now October 2012, we were at 2,900 units, but still 97 days on market. October 2013, just under 3000 units sold and 74 days on market. Jump up to 2014, that’s where we start seeing into the 3000s and higher every October since and look at that, 85 days on market.
So do I think that realistically we’re going to start seeing things creep up like days on market? It’s a very real possibility that that’s going to happen because here’s the thing, everybody wants to say, oh, we have so much housing demand and things like that. But the reality is, until interest rates ease or home prices come down even more, the general population in the greater Salt Lake City area just can’t afford these home prices with these interest rates. And that’s being a 100% real. If you’ve ever watched any of my videos you know. My son is 21, I talk about him frequently, and I look at him as a first time home buyer. He has the down payment, and a lot of people out in the market are kind of in his same position. You either have the down payment, but because the interest rates and the home prices are so high, can’t afford the monthly payment, or you can afford the monthly payment, but you don’t have the down payment.
So something has to give. We are building thousands and thousands of apartments in Salt Lake City. Believe me, it drives me crazy that we’re building this many apartments in Salt Lake City because you have people that want to be first time home buyers, that want to start paying towards their own thing and they can’t because of this. So I do think as inflation continues to go up, our days on market are realistically going to continue to increase. I mean, you can see here in January we started at 30, which again, it’s wintertime, we anticipate that. But I mean, look at these days on market here, 30, 26, 19, 17, 17, and now we’re all the way up to 46. You can’t look at November. We’re only a week into November.
Okay. So for those of you that are saying, I’m going to wait for sales prices to drop, or home prices to drop before I buy. So let’s take a look at this. In May of 2022, the average sales price peaked at just over $644,000. Fast forward six months to October of 2022, and the average sales price, as you saw, was just over $599,000. So in that six months, that is a decrease of 6.94% in the average sales price. So you’re talking just over 1% drop across that six month timeframe. Okay. So let’s take a look at units sold. When you look at October of 21, compared to October of 2022, we have had a 41.48% decrease in the number of sales from October of 21 to October of 2022. That’s a huge decrease when you look at our inventory and our inventory is way higher now than it was in October of 21.
Now, here’s the thing. I do agree that if you’re in a position to buy the monthly payment makes sense, you have the down payment, you have all your ducks in a row. It is a great time for buyers because you do have the upper hand right now with our inventory being higher, obviously not as many sales, home prices are coming down, but you also have a lot more negotiating power with sellers than you did six, seven, eight months ago, even last year at this time. You can ask for closing costs, help with rate buy downs. You can ask for inspection things. You can take your time deciding before you put in an offer. So the climate for a buyer, by all means, it is a buyer’s market right now. Okay. So none of us have a crystal ball to know exactly what’s going to happen with the market. There are concerns from people, and it’s very valid concerns that the market may continue to still decline in sales price.
However, take a look at the fact of how long do you plan on being in your home if you’re looking at buying right now, and you do have the upper hand in purchasing. Because if you plan on being in your home seven years, 10 years, whatever it is, there’s a very good chance that you’re going to ride this out. And then from where you bought now in seven years or 10 years or whatever it is, you could be higher and get cashed out with that equity. So if you have any real estate related questions, I’d love to connect with you. I am always here to help. But as always, make it a great day.