Ok it is technically Sunday the 4th and I’m just now writing this. We went to visit some friends in Durango and took the time off seriously. Max my 3 year old son took his first ever turns on a snowboard. We saw Snowdown, went up to the top of Molas Pass and got to thoroughly enjoy some time off with fam and friends.
Now. I was wrong at least in the short term. Instead of climbing into spring our inventory numbers dropped off kind of substantially since last month. In the beginning of January we started the year with about 950 existing single family homes on the market in El Paso County. Today we’re sitting at 835. This dip in inventory probably correlates to the significant drop in interest rates we saw throughout January. 
If I had to make sense of all this, which really is just me guessing, its that the news of the lower rates we ended the year with got out and buyers landed some deals. Our median sold price remains at $450,000 and our median sold to original list price ratio is 97% which means we’re nowhere near a highest and best super competitive market, but we’re not that far removed from it either in some cases. The market has cooled but not nearly as much as I expected despite the sales volume essentially falling off a cliff.
Speaking of sales volume.
Jan 2024-591 units sold
Jan 2023-694 units sold
Jan 2022-1,014 units sold
Jan 2021-917 units sold
We need to go back to January of 2012 to get sales volume worse that that of this year. And that kind of sums up the state of the industry despite prices not really taking a significant hit. We’ve got an industry that is over saturated with bodies, over saturated even for 2022 sales volume, running into recession sales volume.
As a result we’re seeing a lot of people in the industry getting “creative” as it was put in the annual commission update the other day. On the brighter side of things you’ve got people taking this slowdown as an opportunity to work on things they really like and care about, like myself with construction for example. On the less bright side of things you’ve got agents forcing deals, working outside their areas of expertise, and just getting a little more scummy than usual on their marketing.
In the big economic picture the data remains conflicting. For example last week we had consumer confidence numbers come out at the highest levels since 2021 but PMI numbers, jobs creation numbers, and unemployment data all come in worse that expected. In a nutshell we have a lot of people relieved that inflation is finally getting tamed while a growing number of people seem to be concerned with the fact that its getting tamed by an impending recession. I don’t know, I’ve been wrong a lot, I kind of don’t want to keep guessing. But my money is where my mouth is and my money is stashed in very safe things. The primary reason for that is my belief that the yield curve inversion will continue to be a reliable indicator of economic challenges ahead and we are still in record territory. Last week we dipped as low as 150 bps inverted between the 3 month and 10 year treasuries. We’re starting this week at like 130 bps. Anything below 0 bps is an inversion and signals upcoming economic turmoil, at least historically.
Bottom line is the market is stumbling along. I’m gonna check in mid month I think and do a deep dive as it’s getting late. Have a great week!