The Lafayette Parish Housing Market
Summary:
It would seem likely that a global pandemic and a decline in the oil and gas industry would cause our real estate market to slow down dramatically. On the contrary, interest rates are now so low that they are offsetting the hesitation that one would assume market participants might have. Real estate trends continue to experience favorable changes.
For the month of May, there was a big dip in the number of closed sales as compared to what occurred in May 2019. The market seemed to expect the number of closed sales to be low since we had a stay at home order enforced throughout the month of April. But as predicted based on the number of pending listings in April, there has been a huge increase in the number of sold properties in June 2020. In fact, there was a 41% increase in the number of sales from May to June alone. Additionally, there was a 31% year over year increase in the number of closed sales for the month of June.
In the market area, favorable trends are being observed in both the median and average sales prices for year-over-year data and year-to-date data. However, the change is not enough to indicate values are increasing; therefore, our market is still considered stable.
The number of new listings and pending sales has passed the initial surge from the stay at home order ending. While there is a little more fluctuation with the number of new listings on a monthly basis, the trend line over the past six weeks is more stable than it was the previous month or two before that. Also, pending listings have decreased some from their peak six weeks ago, but the number of new pendings on a weekly basis is still higher than pre-pandemic numbers.
I hope this information is helpful for you in the market area. Let me know what you think!
Real estate trends continue to move in a favorable direction. The question is, how long will this last? With business continuing to operate below full capacity, will there continue to be buyers in the market area? So far the low-interest rates have been enough to keep the real estate market strong. We will continue to watch the real estate trends closely going forward and let you know of any changes we see.
I hope that you found some value in this presentation. Let me know what you think!
