As we move into the slow part of the year, it becomes hard to tell what trends are just seasonal slowdown and what is actually a new trend.
Two stats usually affected by the winter are inventory and prices. Naturally inventory and prices both tend to fall in the winter. But surprisingly, different markets have different rates of decline. So it’s useful to see your own market against its historical pattern.
But the last two years have been far from a normal seasonal pattern. We need to look further back.
So I took each year’s monthly data and compared against the value that January. That shows us a seasonal pattern for the year. If we compare the years, we can get a sense of whether the pattern this year is normal or not.
Below is a graph of 2014-2019 in grey and the last 3 years in color.
As you compare – be sure to look at the gradient of the curve, not just whether it diverges out of the grey lines.
Data from Redfin Data Center.