ST. LOUIS — Home sales in the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County were down last month from December a year ago, but home prices rose due to decreased inventory, according to a report from local Realtors.
The report on single-family residential housing – from St. Louis Realtors, a trade group for residential agents and brokers operating in the city and county – shows 1,309 pending sales last month, which is down 6% from December 2020.
Closings were also down 5.1% year over year in December, to 1,801. At the same time, the median sales price went up 7.7% in December from a year ago, to $251,051.
As of December, buyers were only seeing a month’s supply of single-family home inventory, which was down 28.6% from the same period in 2020.
The inventory of single-family houses for sale last month was 1,844, down 27.4% from December 2020. For comparison, there were 3,367 houses for sale in October 2020 and 5,015 a year before that.
Total average days on the market in last month were 27, compared with 36 days before a home was sold in December 2020.
“It remains a strong seller’s market,” said Katie Berry, an agent with Town and Country-based Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Preferred Properties who serves as president of St. Louis Realtors. “Different neighborhoods and different price points might see some variation in this, but I personally am still seeing multiple offer situations going on, homes selling quickly. There’s still more buyers out there looking than there is inventory.”
Buyers still have to compete for houses with more attractive offers, which is reflected in the increase in the median sales price, Berry noted.
Traditionally, fewer homes have been placed on the market in the winter, but the appetite for buying is still strong, said Bob Bax, who manages the Clayton office of Chesterfield-based Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Alliance Real Estate. More than 100 agents sell property in the central corridor and elsewhere from the Clayton office.
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