March 2020 Sales stats in the words of Kyle Snyder, with First American Title in Longmont, Co.
Well, amid a global pandemic, real estate sales are booming… for now. We saw a very high number of closings in March, but those were mostly contracts written in February. What we have seen in our offices is a record number of orders in March, which should lead to some fairly solid closing numbers for April. It won’t be until May when we’ll begin to see the fallout from the lockdown we are all suffering through. If the world starts to return to something that looks like normal by the end of April (fingers crossed), May’s sales totals will be lower than normal because few contracts will have been written in April. My prediction is that the remainder of 2020 will be very strong.
If we weren’t in the middle of a worldwide shutdown, this month’s report could be the results from any month or any year. The only thing from keeping it looking completely normal is the ridiculously high number of single-family closings in Longmont. In fact, the first quarter of 2020 had the highest number of sales since 2015 and the 3rd highest in 14 years! Additionally, closings set the all-time highest monthly average sales price. The only other time we averaged over $500,000 was in August of 2018.
The 20% increase in March sales looks particularly crazy given the conditions we live in today, but honestly, March of 2019 was abnormally low with just 80 closings. In January, at my stats presentation, I predicted strong 1st quarter closings, so I got lucky on that one. The 2nd quarter is going to be tough to predict… stepping out on a limb, I foresee a total of 550 closing by the end of June.