Memphis Realtors sold more houses during year of COVID-19 than in 2019
Despite the pandemic, Realtors sold a few more homes in 2020 than in 2019. (Tom Bailey/Daily Memphian)
The new president of Memphis-area Realtors, Cassandra Bell-Warren, showed a house in Cordova on Sunday, the day after the home hit the market.
The schedule of showings for it Sunday “were back-to-back-to-back solid. … And they are looking at offers today,” she said on Monday, Jan. 11.
“And I showed one Saturday in Whitehaven. That house came on the market Friday … and they were going to be looking at offers yesterday,” said Bell-Warren, founder of 4 Success Realty.
The feverish demand helps explain how the number of sales in the Memphis area rose again during December despite the pandemic’s dangerous surge and the continued drop in the number of houses for sale.
Memphis-area home sales last month rose 10.7 percent from a year earlier, with 1,796 total sales.
That’s according to the property records database maintained by the Memphis Area Association of Realtors.
Sales also rose 6.3 percent from November, when 1,690 houses changed hands.
The average sales price from December to December increased 17.8 percent, to $223,843.
But inventory, or the number of houses on the market, fell 9.1 percent, to 2,403 units.
The number of houses for sale has fallen 17 of the past 18 months since July 2019, when 4,385 houses were offered for sale.
For all of 2020, the sales volume — the total value of all the homes sold — rose 12.8 percent, to $4.22 billion
The number of units sold during 2020 rose four-tenths of a percent from 2019, when 19,589 homes changed hands.
“To have more total sales in 2020 than the previous year, amid a pandemic, is remarkable,” Bell-Warren said. “Across the board — total sales, pricing, and sales volume — the numbers were up from 2019.”
The demand for housing has been fueled by both low interest rates and limited supply, Bell-Warren indicated.
But, she said, the pandemic is a factor in pushing down the number of “For Sale” signs.
“Because we are in a pandemic, people are not ready to make the decision to put their houses on the market,” she said.
The Memphis Area Realtors Association tracks sales of all single-property transactions in Shelby, Fayette and Tipton counties.
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MAAR Memphis Area Association of Realtors Real EstateTom Bailey
Tom Bailey retired in January as a business reporter at The Daily Memphian, and after 40 years in journalism. A Tupelo, Mississippi, native, he graduated from Mississippi State University. He has lived in Midtown for 36 years.
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