With Monthly Supply of homes being at an all-time low in Rutherford County, many buyers still found properties to purchase, taking advantage of Mortgage Interest Rates dropping below 3% for the first time in history. Read on for a more in-depth look at the July 2020 Rutherford County real estate data.
At a glance, the numbers look like we should have plenty of Supply. Listings were up 6.76% over last year with contracts in July up 35.48% and Closed Sales up 16.82%, making the Supply shortage -32.44% worse than last July and -12.19% worse than just last month. This is creating the “perfect storm” for Sellers to move up to their dream home, because we’re seeing homes sell at a premium, but on the buying end the rates are making monthly mortgage payments extremely affordable by comparison.
No drastic changes in Supply this month, Inventory remains at an all-time low. Only the $600-700K price range saw a really significant change month to month. Supply in that range is down to just 2.13 months, a stark contrast from last July’s 6.89 month supply. Overall we remain very firmly in a Seller’s Market and we don’t see that changing anytime soon.
We’ve long known that the biggest driver of real estate markets is employment, and the RuCo market is no different. The local market continues to improve as COVID-19’s impact on employment continues to diminish. According to the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly reports, Rutherford County’s Unemployment Rate in June was down sharply again, this time to 10.6%, and improvement over April’s peak (16.7%) and May (12.6%), but still considerably higher than the pre-pandemic rate of 2.4%.
We’ve experienced one of the largest impacts on employment statewide, largely due to Nissan, but the local real estate market continues to boom despite that, mostly due to the historically low Mortgage Interest Rates. Just last week we had a client get a 2.69% interest rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage! Take a look at this breakdown from Freddie Mac on how much the Interest Rate effects Mortgage Payments, which is really a more important factor than price when buying real estate. Last week’s average rate was 2.99% of a 30-year fixed!
