How Long Is the Line to Sell? Months of Supply by School District
For every family that bought a home around here this summer, nearly two homes sat on the market waiting.
The September series has covered what buyers are paying, how fast homes are going under contract, and what the builders are doing to values. This week is the last piece of the puzzle: how many other sellers you’re actually competing with. So I counted every home for sale in our eight districts this weekend — 613 of them — and divided by the pace homes actually sold in July, August, and September, about 111 a month. That answers one plain question: if not one more home came on the market, how long would it take to sell everything that’s for sale right now? About six months is considered a balanced market. A longer line favors buyers. A shorter one favors sellers.
Counting everything, our area sits at about five and a half months — right at balanced, nothing alarming. But you’ve read this newsletter long enough to know I don’t stop at the blended number. Set the builders aside and look only at existing homes, and the map rearranges itself. Pilot Point ISD looks like the fastest market we have — four months of supply with the builders counted in, and the builders’ own homes sell through in about two. But a family selling an existing home there is standing in a ten-and-a-half-month line, the longest in the area. That’s last week’s story showing up on the supply shelf: the builders aren’t just pricing below existing homes, they’re absorbing most of the buyers. The northern surprise is Whitesboro ISD at 10.4 months. Whitesboro held its values better than anyone this summer — but the homes waiting to sell there have stacked up, and while part of that is lake and weekend properties out toward Gordonville, the town itself is carrying more than eight months on its own. Callisburg ISD and Sanger ISD sit right at balance, about six months each, and Gainesville ISD has the shortest line of any full-strength district at just under five. The usual honesty note: Valley View ISD, Collinsville ISD, and Tioga ISD only had a handful of existing-home sales this quarter — nine, eight, and ten — so their bars print faint. One faint hint worth watching, though: in Valley View, existing homes are scarce at under three months of supply, while the builders out there are sitting on close to a year of their own inventory.
Two more numbers tell you how the line actually feels. Almost half of everything for sale in our area has been waiting more than ninety days. And more than half has already cut its price at least once. Read those together and the lesson from the summer report card comes right back: the line doesn’t move for homes priced for last year’s market. The sellers who priced right out of the gate this summer kept about 95 cents on the dollar and were gone in a month — while everyone else stood in line and then cut anyway.
So what do you do with this? If you’re selling, you can’t shorten the line — but you don’t have to stand in it. A home priced against this fall’s chart, not last spring’s, jumps the queue; that’s not salesmanship, it’s what the ninety-day number is telling you. If you own near a builder community, last week’s advice goes double now that you can see the shelf they’re stocking. And if you’re buying, understand what a ten-month line means: in the districts above that dashed line, you have more room to negotiate than buyers here have had in years. Thirty-four years here has taught me the line is never the same length on every street — some streets have no line at all. If you’re weighing a sale or a purchase this fall, let’s find out which kind of street yours is. I’m here to help.
Chance Kirby - Irick Real Estate
940.300.6900
Want to know what this means for your home? Call or text Chance Kirby at (940) 300-6900 for a free price opinion based on recent sales near you.
