As Baton Rouge real estate agents move into what traditionally is the strongest sales season of the year, they’re doing so with the wind at their backs. According to the latest monthly sales report from the Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors, sales in the eight-parish Capital Region surged 15% in March over sales from the like month last year, which helped make the first quarter the most active in recent years.
A total of 1,923 homes were sold in the Capital Region during the first three months of this year, or 135 more than were closed in the first quarter of last year—a 7.6% increase. Sales so far this year were also 8.6% higher than during the first three months of 2013; 19.8% higher than sales in the like period in 2012; and 41% higher than 2011 figures for the first quarter.
The difference this year was a strong March. In March 2014, sales surprisingly made an about-face and fell by 15% across the Capital Region from levels of March 2013. It marked the first year-over-year decline in sales in 18 months.
“I keep trying to pin down what happened last March, but I just can’t put a finger on it,” says Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors President Donna Wolff. “Was it Mardi Gras? Snow days? I was even trying to think about something that happened globally last March that caused everyone to stop and rethink their plans to buy a home, but I can’t come up with anything. If I could predict things like this, I wouldn’t be selling real estate.”
Wolff says the total sales figures, while certainly encouraging, only tell part of the story of the local real estate market’s strength. The average sales price during the first three months of this year was up 7.7% to $209,071, and pending sales are up 16.1%. Meanwhile, the months supply figure—a measure of how fast all the homes on the market would sell at the current sales pace—was at 4.5 months for the entire Capital Region at the end of March. That’s down from 5.9 months a year earlier. Typically, real estate brokers regard any reading below 6 months to indicate a seller’s market. Wolff says it’s now safe to say the entire eight-parish region is in a seller’s market.
“We really have been in a seller’s market across most of the region since the later part of last year. East Baton Rouge was the only one that was teetering around 6 months, but even here it’s now 4.7 months in March,” she says.
Wolff says the only figure that concerns her from the latest report was inventory of available homes, which was at 3,588 in March, down 13.8% compared to the same month last year.
“I’m hoping we’ll start to see that go up a little bit in the coming months. I’d like to see it up around 5,000 by the May report,” she says. “We are starting to see a lot of new construction come online in developments like Rouzan, Willow Grove and others, so I’m hopeful that figure will begin to rise.”
GBRAR tracks home sales in East Baton Rouge, Ascension, Livingston, West Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, West Feliciana, Iberville and Pointe Coupee parishes. Access the complete GBRAR home sales reports.
—Steve Sanoski
