Hey Lafayette! This is Jim Keaty with Keaty Real Estate, and this is your 2018 Market Update brought to you by Thimmesch Kastner Insurance.
Now, there’s a lot to get into, and I am super excited to report that 2018 was the best year in Lafayette history. Ever!
Here’s why… we sold more homes in 2018 in the history of Lafayette. The MLS reported, in 2018, a five percent increase with 3376 sales, making 2018 the best year on record. We killed it!
Did you know the economic impact for each sale is approximately $51,000, so that means we brought over $170,000,000 to our local economy in Lafayette. That’s incredible!
When it comes to volume, we had an eight percent increase year-over-year, equalling over $750,000,000 in sales. Our average sales price in Lafayette actually increased to $223,000. That’s a 3% increase year-over-year. This explains why we had an eight percent increase in volume versus the five percent increase in sales, and that’s because our average sales price increased by three percent.
Are y’all with me?!
When you look at our pending listings, you will notice a 10% increase year-over-year. Pending’s are a very good indicator of what’s to come in the Lafayette Real Estate market within the next 60 to 90 days. We had a super strong November and a very decent December. Keaty Real Estate is predicting more closings in the first quarter of 2019 compared to last year.
What about our Active Listings?! In the real estate industry, it is all about supply and demand. Active’s are an indicator of what’s out there and what our supply is in Lafayette. In 2018, the MLS reported a 16% increase year-over-year, meaning we had 16% more supply. However, the demand has also gone up a bit because we actually reported a three percent increase in price. More active listings equal more sellers which then equals more buyers. We are currently in a very healthy market.
Speaking about demand, one way we can get a good pulse on the number of buyers that are actually in the market is to look at the foot traffic. We get that data from the Centralized Showing Service – a system that all the realtors in Lafayette use to set up showings on properties and homes for sale. We compile the number of showing requests for each month, which is a really good indicator of the foot traffic, or demand, in Lafayette. in 2018, we reported 15% more showings!
These numbers are telling a story, and the story is that there are more buyers, there are more pending’s, and there are more sales. There are also more listings, so each buyer has more homes to look at. this would help explain the 15% increase in showings because they might be going out to multiple houses when they are looking to buy a home in Lafayette.
Take a look at our fourth quarter – we had an unusually high amount of foot traffic during the holidays. Could this mean a very strong first quarter for 2019? The data is certainly pointing us in that direction!
We always want to keep a close eye on what’s going on with interest rates and where they’re going. The big news is that instead of the increase we had been expecting the fourth quarter of 2018, interest rates actually decreased. Fear is about to slow down the economy. The economic growth slow down, the stock market volatility, and of course the government shutdown have all stoked economic uncertainty, decreasing mortgage interest rates. However, as you can see, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, the Mortgage Brokers Association, and the National Association of Realtors are all expecting the interest rates to increase in 2019, so we are going to continue to keep a close eye on that.
If you’re in the market to buy right now, you’ve lucked out. I would encourage anyone to take advantage of this as soon as possible because everyone is expecting the interest rates to go up this year.
If you’re one of those lucky buyers that are going to be buying a home in the next 30 days, you’re going to need a really good professional service in insurance. You’re going to want to call Levi Kastner of Thimmesch Kastner Insurance, who can set you up to capitalize on the best insurance rate in town. He actually saved me $5000 on all of my insurance for the year. You definitely want to give him a call!
If you’re in doubt about our local economy, you can simply turn to the expert, Dr. Loren Scott. In his economic report last quarter, he mentioned, “The hammering hasn’t stopped for Lafayette, but hope lies ahead.” He is projecting the Lafayette economy to turn the corner this year, adding 1400 jobs in 2019, and then moving to an even stronger 2020 adding an additional 4900 jobs, for a healthy 2.4% growth rate.
I’m sure we are all looking forward to seeing this happen. We’ve been seeing a lot of new construction in Lafayette, so I want to talk about new construction versus existing sales. We actually saw a 3% decrease in new construction sales in 2018. However, we also saw a 3% increase in volume. How can you have a decrease in the number of sales but an increase in volume? Lafayette saw a whopping 6% increase in the average sales price of new constructions homes sold in Lafayette. We had a record-breaking year for existing home sales with 7% increase in number of sales and a 6% increase in the average sales price equally 13% increase in dollar volume sold.
These are all great things for our real estate industry and for Lafayette, in general. We hope to continue to see our community grow.
For a deeper dive into the status of our market, you can always visit our website www.LafayetteMarketReports.com.
This has been your 2018 market update brought to you by Thimmesch Kastner Insurance, and I’m Jim Keaty with Keaty Real Estate. Thanks for watching!
TIME STAMPS:
0:52 – Volume & Average Sales Price
1:17 – Pendings
1:36 – Actives
2:15- Foot Traffic
3:12 Interest Rates
3:36 Mortgage Rates
4:23 Louisiana Economic Outlook
#always110 #lafayetterealestate #homesforsaleinlafayettela #housesforrentinlafayettela #realestatelafayettela