RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — The Virginia housing market has fewer active and new listings this year, yet prices are still going up, according to a recent sales report by Virginia Realtors.
In its June 2023 Virginia Home Sales Report, Virginia Realtors said June active house listings fell by 17% from the previous year — dropping from nearly 20,000 to 16,246.
New listings suffered even more, seeing a 25% drop when compared to 2022. This is the lowest June rate in over ten years.
According to Virginia Realtors, the areas most affected by this decline include Northern Virginia, the Fredericksburg area and parts of the Richmond Metro Area.
Virginia’s 2023 housing market looks more like its 2015 market, Virginia Realtors said. Sale rates have fallen back to those nearly decade-old levels, with a 17.5% drop compared to last year.
“One factor that’s keeping Virginia’s supply levels low is the ‘lock-in effect’, meaning that many would-be sellers are opting to stay in their homes because of the ultra-low mortgage rates they obtained in 2020 and 2021,” said Virginia Realtors 2023 President Katrina M. Smith.
While the market may have fewer listings, prices are going up. The statewide median sales price reached a new high this June, hitting $411,000 — which is a 3.4% increase from the previous June.
Virginia Realtors said the median price has increased steadily every month of 2023 so far except for March.
“Currently, Virginia’s home prices defy typical market patterns,” says Virginia Realtors Chief Economist Ryan Price. “The chronically low inventory of homes paired with a robust pipeline of buyers has continued to put upward pressure on home prices, even despite the significant slowdown in sales.”
For more information on these statistics, view the full report here.
