Filename: March 31st, Twin Cities Market Update, COVID19 update, and more
Duration: 10:32
Hey, it's Travis Anderson here. We are going to do this week's video on how Coronavirus is affecting our real estate market. Hey, we are going to look at three things here today. We are going to talk about my current activity within the market. We will talk about the market as a whole and then of course, we will make some assumptions about where things might go depending on how the data looks. And then of course, I'll make some awesome fun recommendation about a home tip.
Number one, let's talk about how our own business has been affected. Hey, listen, zero effect. In fact, I would say that there has been a positive effect on my own clients' lives. In other words, I've noticed that there are maybe less people going out to look at real estate, but the people that are looking are more ready to buy, so then you are actually having better buyers walk through the homes. We do have some data to support that to be the case, but we put three listings on the market on Friday. Now remember the Shelter-in-Place started on Saturday and by Sunday afternoon all three listings were sold for at least their asking price. Some of them sold for more. We worked with a buyer over the weekend. We worked with three sellers over the weekend. We've got active buyers right now that we are showing homes to. There isn't a vast change in the actual overall conclusion of buying and selling real estate.
So what has changed, of course? Sellers, we are recommending again, leave the doors open. Let's leave the lights on. Buyers, sometimes it's like, hey, just put your hands in your pockets. Let's not touch anything. If you are sick, stay home. If you have a fever, stay home. So there are things that have been affected, but as far as the actual buying and selling of real estate, there has been no effect in our team.
What are some things that we are noticing? When we go to closings, I had a closing today, they asked me not to go into the room. The title closer, said, "Hey, just sit out in the lobby. When I'm done, we will bring out the paperwork for you." So I didn't get a chance to sit in with my clients. We just sat in the lobby and waited for everybody to finish up. They are putting buyers and sellers in separate rooms. A lot of sellers, they are asking to sign at home or come in and sign early. So we are putting less people in a room together.
Title companies are going down. I walked by a title company on the way into this video and they were spraying down the door handles, spraying down the tables and getting everything really clean. So obviously that is a change, how we are approaching working with buyers and sellers. We've done some video conferencing. One of the listings we put on the market on Friday, I've actually never met the misses. We just did a video conference call for that, so some of those things, for sure. We are doing more video tours. All of those things are true.
Let's look at some of the data. I wrote some things down here. I wanted to analyze all of March so we could take a look from a week by week basis what has actually changed. So let's talk about active listings. This is new listing data, week one-1300, week two-1390, week three-1600 and week four-1550. It went up and then back down just slightly. So as far as new listings that hit the market in the month of March, I would say there is variably no change, probably seasonal more than anything else. Do I expect for listings to continue to come on the market at a high level? I actually do. There is still room like we've talked about in previous videos to get more listings on our market. And so we have a gap, I would say between 50% and 60% more listings. So I hope to see that number actually increase over the next couple of weeks instead of the slight decrease that it did from three to four. But we will see. We will see what happens after the Shelter-in-Place. So stay tuned for the next video.
Pending transactions, get this; week one-1223, week two-1486, week three-1585 and week four-1451. Again, were there less buyers in the entire MLS? Yeah. However, we are looking at one variable and one thing that maybe isn't perfectly accurate, since it's the last week, a lot of our data doesn't get inputted until afterwards. In other words, where maybe a hundred homes less sold on the market in the fourth week from the third week, but that was just literally Friday and Saturday and Sunday. Some of that data might increase over the next few days as we actually input data into the MLS, so again, variably no change in number of buyers buying.
Here is the change in the market that I want to talk about. Week number one, 29000 total showings, week number two, 28400 total showings, week number three, big decline, about 30% less showings, 22000 and then again another 30% less showing, 16700. In previous videos, I've looked at just one price range. Here, I looked at the entire market for showings. At the beginning of the month we had 28000 showings and the end of the month we had 16000 showings. That looks to be like a very large change and of course, it is a large change, but the data doesn't say that there is less buyers.
In other words, the people that are looking at homes are actually buying the homes that they are looking at. So instead of maybe at the beginning of the month, we had more people looking that were maybe just browsing or looky loos or whatever you want to call it. Now, people are sheltering in place. They are not going to look at real estate unless they are in the need to buy real estate, but if they do, they find a home and they write an offer. I suspect that the number of showing activity will be stagnant. If not, maybe less than it is even currently. And then we will see an increase again as we see the regulations increase or loosen is maybe a better word for it.
The good news is the number of homes for sale is still below what I think it should be. We've got a gap there, maybe between 50% and 60%, we could get more homes in the market. The number of buyers that are actually buying looks to be just fine. The number of showing activity, that's actually down. That can be a good thing for both buyers and sellers. In fact, I think it's a good thing to actually do the research before you are going and looking at houses. I think it's equally a good thing for sellers to have less people coming through their home. So these things are all good.
What's the data point that we've been talking about that I'm most worried about and that is the job market. I'm looking at some data points here. I'm just going to read them directly. We had a record week in Minnesota of 116000 jobs lost and that comes directly from the state of Minnesota. We have 300000 people who filed for unemployment in a two-week period. Now again, we are looking at one variable. I do think that that number would be lower if unemployment benefits weren't expanded. In other words, more people have access to unemployment, so then more people are taking advantage of unemployment, which I think is fine. Just understand that that number is going to be inflated by some percentage. I'm not exactly sure what it would be, but it's going to be inflated by some percentage compared to what it would normally be because it has been expanded. Now, that number totals in that two week period. That number totals 5.5% of Minnesota workforce and that comes directly from the state of Minnesota.
Now listen, if we continue to see unemployment go from 5 ½ percent in a two week period, and then the next two weeks it goes to 10%, and then the next two weeks it goes to 15%. I mean, geez, these types of things would be unprecedented. A lot of economists are predicting that maybe 30% of people will be on unemployment. Obviously, that's going to affect the real estate market. This video isn't saying one way or another, what the future is going to hold. My assumption is if we approach 10% real unemployment, we are going to see a change in the market. The good news is we have capacity for more listings. In other words, if we do get unemployment and people are forced to sell their homes because of foreclosure and things like that, we actually do have room for those foreclosures to come online and to come available for sale without actually affecting the price. We just don't know how much this unemployment is going to affect things.
Of course, there is a byproduct of unemployment, of things like, domestic violence, suicide, things like that. All of those things too will eventually affect the real estate market. So hopefully unemployment, we are able to kind of curb this. My hope for everybody is that we are able to get through this situation as quickly as possible and that the market begins to recover, the economy begins to recover. I'm not sure how swiftly that recovery will be. I'm perfectly fine with a long recovery in Minnesota. How that would affect the real estate market, a longer recovery is fine. It's just we need recovery to begin sooner than we need the bottom to bottom out. In other words, if we see recovery in the next 60 days, 90 days, 120 days, we are probably going to be okay. If we don't see recovery for 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, obviously we are going to have some issues.
Time for a home care tip. I had a conversation with one of my clients the other day and they had said that their toilet bowl had some calcium buildup around there. Of course, you can buy products to take care of calcium buildup all over the place. They said they were having a hard time. Bleach wasn't taking care of it. CLR wasn't taking care of it. Here is something that I had remembered from a listing that I had owned myself that I had sold a few years ago, is pumice stone. You can go to your local store like Walmart or Target and you can actually get a little stone that you can use to clean the skin off your feet. You find it in like the home care section. You can use that and that will work to take off any buildup inside of a toilet and it won't wreck the porcelain of the toilet. So just do a YouTube video, search, pumice stone on toilet. You will see what I mean. If you've got build up, that's a great way to get it out of there without using chemicals.
Hey, if you found this video helpful, feel free to share it on your Facebook page, feel free to tag me in the link, maybe share it to a friend. I hope that these videos are helpful for you. They are definitely helpful for me to stay in touch with what's actually happening, so I can provide better advice to you during these challenging times. Have a great day.