Inventory Grows Closer to the Six-Month Ideal
If you've been frustrated by lack of housing inventory, this year's trend is good news...new listings are up by 7.4% from February 2024. This is equal to around five months of inventory, up from 4.4 months a year earlier.
However, sales are still lagging because of high home prices and mortgage interest rates. In addition, buyers and sellers alike are increasingly nervous about their jobs. While some may move if they're required to return to their offices, others may postpone taking action as they fear being laid off.
Median sales prices are on the move across the nation, with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the top of the list. On a year-over-year basis, Pittsburgh home buyers paid 14.8% more than last January/February, closely followed by buyers in Nassau County, New York (12.2%) and West Palm Beach, Florida (11.5%).
Metro areas seeing the largest annual decreases were led by Austin, Texas, where prices fell by 4.5%. Prices in Tampa and Jacksonville, Florida fell by 2.1% and 0.1% respectively, while prices in Warren, Michigan fell by 0.2%.1
Is Mark Zuckerberg Reading My Chats?
If you use the Messenger app with Facebook, or have downloaded it on its own, you may have recently seen a pop-up with a friendly graphic and the headline "Summarize chats, edit photos and more with Meta AI".
While some users may find the summarizing tool useful, this is also a warning that your chat content and any photos you share may be used to train their AI platform. Therefore, if you don't want anything within a message to end up within a response to a future AI query, you may want to leave it out.
While you can't opt out of this 100% (this was in Meta's small print, and you had to agree to it to use their apps), you can still prevent Meta AI from accessing your information by doing one of these:
- Not ask @MetaAI questions in your chats;
- Delete your chats when you're finished;
- Delete or edit any messages within a chat that you want to keep out of its AI training set.
Home Builder Confidence Slides
Builder sentiment across the nation fell sharply this month, due to higher mortgage rates, rising housing costs and concerns regarding future tariffs and their effect on building materials pricing.
The latest National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) recorded a five-point slide in builder confidence in the market. Currently at 42, this is the lowest level seen in the last five months.
The HMI survey also reported that 26% of builders cut home prices in February. This is down from 30% in January and the lowest share since May 2024. Meanwhile, the average price reduction was 5% in February, the same rate as the previous month. The use of sales incentives was 59% in February, down from 61% in January.
Here are the three-month moving averages for the four major regions:
- The South held steady at 46 points;
- the Midwest slid to 45;
- the Northeast fell to 57; and
- The West came in at 39.
How to Spot Scam Sellers on Social Media
From Facebook Marketplace to Craig's List, social media is flooded with fake ads. Many are selling items like cars, trucks, high-end electronics and even purebred puppies. Other scammers pretend to be property managers, taking would-be renters for a four-figure deposit in exchange for holding a non-existing property until they can view it in person—something that never happens.
Some banks are taking steps to protect their customers from these scams. For example, some banks do not allow customers to send Zelle payments when they're going to a social media contact instead of a friend or family member.
Most fake ads posted by scammers will display at least one of these red flags.
- Do the ad's photos look as if they were screen-grabbed from another web site?
- Have you seen the photos in other postings?
- Doing an image search can ID a scam. You can do an image search with Chrome, Firefox, Safari and other browsers.
- Is the seller pressuring buyers to act quickly?
- Is the price ridiculously low?
Turn One Home Sale into Several New Listings
Announce your win on your social media and within an email to your prospects. If you have the budget, consider sending postcards featuring your sale.
When you're writing your social media post or email, you can say something like this:
"I'm excited that I was hired to represent this beautiful home and these sellers. We sold it in only 25 days! It's a great time to sell, so if you're curious to know more about your home's current value, contact me to learn more."
While this will appeal to homeowners who are already seriously considering selling, there will be plenty of people who will appreciate some free education. Consider offering prospects a Neighborhood Market Report (CMA) or one or more flyers from Total Expert's vast selection of educational and product-related materials.5
Sources: 1redfin.com, 2 socialmediatoday.com, 3nahb.org, 4chase.com, 5darrylspeaks.com
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