Jacksonville Monthly Market Update | March 2023

It's heating up! Like a superstar about to catch fire in the NBA, the Northeast Florida market is looking like it will perform very well heading into the Summer.

Now, let's talk about the major points from this month's update:

• Rates are continuing to provide relief to the market as they continued their decline last month. Fast forward to today and the average rate is getting closer to 6% with VA averaging in the upper 5's. If you want to see a more frequent rate update, we publish a weekly update on Instagram every Monday.
• Demand is really picking up with closed sales 37% higher than last month. Buyers are more used to the market compared to last year when every week seemed to bring a higher rate and are now settling in and taking action. We are just 13% off the number of sales the same time as last year which is amazing given rates are about 2% higher now.
• Supply is slightly higher, but still limited overall sitting at roughly 5,600 homes for sale. We normally see more homes hit the market starting in March and we are lagging that trend so far this year. Many people remain locked in their 3% mortgages and unwilling to take on a higher cost with a move. Without sufficient inventory, buyers will remain on the sidelines and wait until things change. This could result in a tsunami of deals as rates get low enough to make the trade for many sellers.
• The market remains tilted towards sellers as we are down to 2.1 months of inventory. It was trending more towards buyers in the Winter months, but has since reversed course with an increase in closings much greater than new homes hitting the market. I'd expect more multiple offer situations and fewer incentives from sellers to get deals done going forward.

If you have questions or are seeing anything worth noting in the market, drop me an email at [email protected]. I'd love to connect! Also, if you'd like to have us come talk to your brokerage, check out our speaking options.

Side note: there were a few adjustments to the dashboard to note:

• Switched to median from average on the home price. This produces a lower price and is the exact middle mark of the price of houses that sold. Economists say this is a preferred measure because it eliminates the effects of outliers (that $20M mansion that sold and is pushing up average price), but I'd argue both numbers have merit - especially when viewed together. This is change due to data availability.
• Days on market is now based on the median instead of average. Similar to price, this produces a lower number that doesn't move as much over time. This is also due to data availability.
• We changed the label to show '"April 2023 Update" in the top right as the update is coming out in April. The data is all for March and this is to help everyone know that it's the most up-to-date information available.