Agents are feeling the housing market start to heat up again. Are you ready, Boise?
It’s only February, and the Boise housing market is already heating up again.
After several months of reduced competition causing home-sales prices to rise a bit less furiously, buyers are once again starting to find themselves in fights in a seller’s market.
Consider Jake Templeton. He is a Boise real estate agent who planned to show 10 homes on Saturday, Feb. 12. Five of them were already pending sales within 12 hours of the house being listed.
Templeton is beginning to witness buyers once again doing whatever they can to compete. After several months of less competition and a brief plateau in prices, Templeton has seen the market gain steam.
“In the past month, basically since mid-January to now, we’re starting to get back into that multiple-offer situation,” Templeton said by phone. “We’re seeing a lot of over-asking-price offers, a lot of buyers having to waive appraisals, inspections for information only. Anything they can do to really compete.”
This uptick is not reflected in the latest housing prices from the Intermountain Multiple Listing Service. The median price of a home in Ada County in January was $540,000, a 1.1% decrease from December’s record $546,000. The average days on the market increased from 32 to 37, another metric pointing to a seemingly slower market.
The median price for a home in Canyon County in January was $424,900. That’s a 25.3% increase from a year prior and a 1.3% increase from the previous month’s $419,480 median.
But since the data is delayed, the January numbers don’t quite reflect what’s happening now. In recent weeks, Templeton and others have watched buyer demand creep up and competition for houses increase, too.
It’s still not at the level of last spring, when Boise frequently made national news for its real estate boom.
“Based on my experience with buyer clients over the last few weeks, it seems like competition is starting to ramp up again,” Boise Regional Realtors President Becky Enrico-Crum said in a news release. “One thing is for sure — our market needs more inventory in order to be more balanced.”
Typically, the housing market cools off during the winter months. That’s what happened this winter in the Boise area as prices stayed somewhat level since last summer.
“(January numbers are) saying the market is slowing down when it’s exactly the opposite,” Templeton said. “It’s incredibly speeding up.”
The prices still continue to be driven by low supply compared with high demand and low interest rates. Templeton said some buyers may feel pressure to buy quickly to secure low interest rates before they increase.
For context, the $540,000 median price is still a 20% year-over-year increase compared with January 2021. But even that may feel like a bit of a reprieve for potential homebuyers after the year-over-year Ada County price increase topped out at 45.3% last May. The average days houses spent on the market last June was 10.
There were 441 homes available at the end of January, which was 63.9% more than in January 2021. That’s still low considering the high buyer demand.
Ada County in January had a 0.3 month supply of existing homes — or about nine days — and a one-month supply of new construction, according to the Boise Regional Realtors. That means if no additional homes came on the market, the supply of homes would run out in that time.
This indicates a strong seller’s market since typically a balanced market has between four and six months of supply.
Other details from the latest monthly listing-service report:
- The average days on the market for homes in Ada County was 37 in January. That’s 19 more days than in January 2021.
- The median price for a newly constructed home in Ada County in January was $588,945. That’s a 28% increase from a year prior.
- Highest median prices: Eagle, $894,183; Northeast Boise, $846,200; North Boise, $777,500.
- Lowest median prices: Parma, $360,000; Melba, $393,000; Northwest Caldwell, $395,000.
This story was originally published February 12, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
