Suburban Real Estate - Market Update 3rd Quarter 2020

In the early Spring, As the COVID19 experience began to intensify and the lockdowns began, real estate agents all over Bucks and Montgomery Counties and the Lehigh Valley began to hear their phones ring. With entertainment and culture closed older clients that had left the rural and exurb areas of southeastern Pennsylvania for the walkability of the cities were beginning to think about reversing that migration. Young families with school age children, previously reluctant to pull their kids from a school that they were used to, were suddenly taking advantage of the disconnect from physical school to make that long planned move. Younger professionals, liberated from their commutes, discovered that they could afford a much large place outside the expensive city limits.

Real estate inventory in the counties was already low and getting lower. In fact, According to a new report from Drexel University's Lindy Institute for Urban Studies, the suburban Philadelphia real estate market hit many record highs in the third quarter of 2020, including highest number of million-dollar homes ever sold in a single quarter.

Suburban house prices shifted significantly upwards in Q3, while the city’s house prices cooled. After several quarters of either negative growth or sluggish growth, the suburban house price index grew by 4.5% in Q3, making this quarter one of the suburb’s best quarters in ten years.

Since the pandemic’s peak, the Philadelphia region’s house prices have crossed major new thresholds. The median suburban house price in Q3 was $300,000; the first time it has ever crossed the $300,000 mark.

Home sales rebounded significantly in Q3 with the suburbs outperforming the city. The lifting of the quarantine and its restrictions on home showings in Q3 saw sales volume increase by 71% in Philadelphia (5,339 sales in Q3) and 63% in the suburbs (21,516 sales in Q3). The level of suburban sales is the highest since this data began being recorded in 2005, beating the previous record of 19,360 back in 2018 Q2. However, compared to the level of home sales one year ago the city’s sales volume is actually down 14% while the suburb’s volume is up 13%.

Million-dollar sales across the region broke a new record…and by a HUGE margin. There were 470 home sales at a price of one million dollars or more across the region in Q3, with 90% of them occurring in the suburbs. Not only is this 49% higher than the previous record of 316 +$1m sales set one year ago, it is also 167% higher than the region’s quarterly average of 176 such sales.

You can visit my website every month (usually around the 15^th of each month) to keep up with the latest information about local market information. https://cseraydarian.addisonwolfe.com/bucks-county-house-sale-information