34% decrease in Wake County real estate transactions in January

RALEIGH – A new report from the office of the Wake County Register of Deeds finds that there was a 34% decrease in real estate transactions in January 2022.

But that’s not because demand has fallen, as the real estate markets across the Triangle are experiencing housing demand at an “all-time high,” Matt Fowler, the executive director of Triangle Multiple Listing Service (TMLS) told WRAL TechWire this week.

To start the year, the available inventory of homes for sale in Raleigh was near historic lows, and fell by more than 50% year-over-year, WRAL TechWire previously reported.

Report: Number of Raleigh homes for sale down 50%, list prices up more than 9% in December

A silver lining?

Still, the measure of the median price across all of the 1,986 transactions of real property in Wake County fell to $410,000, down slightly from $411,000 in December 2021, according to the Register of Deeds.

But there were 3,034 real estate transactions in Wake County in December 2021, the report noted, a 34% decrease in closed transactions month-over-month.

The total value of those real estate transactions fell even farther, the report found

“Total sales value from all three segments equaled over $1.79 billion for January 2022, down 48% from December’s total sales of over $3.48 billion,” the report reads.

A portion of that decrease came from the reduction of the total number of transactions in the very high value segment of the market, or transactions for more than $30 million, which reached a record high in December 2021.

Yet the total value of transactions in the core market, or properties that sold for less than $1 million, also fell in January 2022 compared to December 2021.

“1,871 transactions totaling just over $777 million, down 32% from December 2021’s total of $1.14 billion,” the report noted.

Addressing the challenges of the Triangle’s housing markets

Housing market like a bathtub

Nationally, would-be homebuyers are experiencing the fastest, priciest real estate market on record, a new analysis from national real estate brokerage Redfin found.

“The acute shortage of new listings of homes for sale is the biggest problem the housing market faces right now,” said Redfin Deputy Chief Economist Taylor Marr in a statement regarding the market analysis.

“If you think of the housing market like a bathtub, water (supply of homes for sale) is flowing down the drain (buyers sucking up supply) faster than new water (new listings) is coming in through the faucet,” explained Marr. “Rising mortgage rates may slow the drain down a bit (cool demand) as record-high monthly payments take a toll on buyers’ budgets. Bottom line: without a flood of new listings we will be sitting in a very shallow bath for a while.”