If you’ve been in any store lately you’ve seen the Christmas decorations already on display (hello…it’s only October, but alas), which means 2023 will be here before we know it. And, if you’ve opened any physical or digital newspaper lately the housing news seems grim looking towards the end of the year.

And while we certainly are down year-over-year, by no means (as we’ve been saying since July) is there any indication that we are going to see any sort of housing crash. Two other experts whom we trust are saying the same. Both Mike DelPrete and Matthew Gardner shared insights on the market recently. “2021 is an outlier, not a benchmark,” says Mike DelPrete.

And since we know the data doesn’t lie — let’s take a look at the numbers.

September brought us 499K home sales across the U.S. which was 1% off from the 506K we predicted and 10% fewer homes sold than we saw in August.  

Looking ahead to October and November we predict there will be 502K home sales in October and 457K home sales in November. That’s a 21% and 25% decrease YOY respectively. But, as Mike DelPrete said, 2021 is an outlier.

When we take a step back and look back at 2019 that’s only a 4% decrease for October and a .2% decrease for November YOY. AKA, don’t panic.    

Now, of course we aren’t just Pollyanna over here and know there are some factors that will still have a dramatic impact on both you and your agents’ business. Namely your total transactions per year as home prices and inventory potentially constrain an already strained market.

The good news though is we have no reason to believe there will be a significant drop in home prices, even when we look across the U.S. When reviewing the data on some of the top markets (above) you’ll see with the exception of Bridge MLS in California, the remaining MLSs are showing home prices steadying, not dropping. We expect to continue to see this deceleration in price growth, and not an actual dip in home prices, which is another indicator that we aren’t headed toward a crash.

The best thing you and your agents can do right now is to continue to focus on your local market and being the home buying and selling expert for your current and future clients.

You and your agents are the experts in your market and we all know local matters more than anything else. One way to portray this expertise is to have your agents use their technology tools, like MoxiPresent, to run a thoughtful property review for clients who could still benefit from a sale right now. This is the time to collaborate with the consumer around the value of their home because expectations from 6 months or before no longer apply as we revert back to more of what “normal” will look like.

We know the headlines can be scary, but from everything we are seeing in our data and from experts around the industry, while things may not be what they were last year, there is still so much opportunity for you and your agents’ businesses