Mid Month Pricing Update and Forecast for September 2017
Each month about this time we look back at the previous month, analyze how pricing has behaved and report on how well our forecasting techniques performed. We also give a forecast for how pricing will move over the next 30 days.
For the monthly period ending September 15, we are currently recording a sales $/SF of $149.06 averaged for all areas and types across the ARMLS database. This is down 11 cents or 0.07% from the $149.17 we now measure for August 15. Our forecast range midpoint was $149.01, with a 90% confidence range of $146.03 to $151.99. The actual result was extremely close to our predicted mid-point, coming in 5 cents above.
On September 15 the pending listings for all areas & types shows an average list $/SF of $153.13, down 0.7% from the reading for August 15. Among those pending listings we have 95.0% normal, 1.8% in REOs and 3.2% in short sales and pre-foreclosures. This mix is very little changed from August.
Our mid-point forecast for the average monthly sales $/SF on October 15 is $148.18, which is 0.6% below the September 15 reading. We have a 90% confidence that it will fall within ± 2% of this mid point, i.e. in the range $145.22 to $151.14.
So we are forecasting another small decline over the next 30 days. This is slightly unusual since we normally start to see some upward momentum by the beginning of October. Last year at this time we predicted an increase and the actual result exceed our prediction. We would therefore not be too surprised if today’s forecast turned out to be too pessimistic.
