Straight Shooting Real Estate

This week, list prices in the four Arkansas housing markets surveyed tended to drop as the number of homes for sale increased.

For the purposes of this discussion, you might want to download a PDF showing four months of housing data by clicking right here. To see a cumulative graphic of how inventories and list prices behaved this week, either click on the above graphic to expand it or download a PDF of it right here.

The number of homes in inventory, average list prices and median list prices covered in the report at issue here are not from the entire state. Rather, the areas surveyed are central Arkansas, the Fort Smith/Van Buren area, the Jonesboro area and northwest Arkansas. Central Arkansas covers the Little Rock-North Little Rock Metropolitan Statistical area which is made up of the Faulkner, Grant, Lonoke, Perry, Pulaski and Saline counties. The Forth Smith/Van Buren area includes Crawford and Sebastian counties in western Arkansas; the Jonesboro market covers Craighead County in northeast Arkansas and northwest Arkansas includes Benton and Washingotn counties.

Combined, housing inventories in the four areas referenced increased slightly from last week while average list prices decreased. The relationship between supply and demand, remained as expected as it’s only logical that list prices will decrease as more homes are added. Overall, however, we’ve seen a net decrease in both the number of homes for sale and average list prices over the past three months and it’s anyone’s guess whether that trend will continue.

One thing to keep an eye on when considering list prices is that mortgage interest rates have been on the rise since April. Buyers expecting to sit on the fence and wait for prices to decrease further may be in for a surprise — if mortgage rates continue to rise, then slight drops in home prices may be offset by increases in mortgage payments.