The share of homes for sale that had experienced at least one price reduction in November jumped 24.1 percent compared to the same month last year, according to a monthly review of multiple listing service listings in 26 major markets conducted by national brokerage ZipRealty.
As of Dec. 1, sellers had cut asking prices on 304,421 listings. That’s 48.4 percent of all listings, flat from October, but up from 43.5 percent in November 2009. All but two markets — Charlotte, N.C., and Miami-Ft.Lauderdale-Palm Beach, Fla. — saw year-over-year increases in the number of discounted homes. Out of 26 markets, 19 saw double-digit jumps.
Five major markets saw their price-reduced inventory rise more than 75 percent compared to November 2009, all but one in California: San Diego (108.4 percent), San Francisco (100 percent), Orange County (91 percent), Los Angeles (78.6 percent) and Las Vegas (83.3 percent).
"Typically, November is a slower month for sales," said John Oldham, ZipRealty’s director of marketing, in a statement. "The increase in price-reduced listings is evidence that sellers are still trying to find the right price point to get the property to sell."
Listings had been reduced an average of two times. The median list price last month was $234,484, down 2.8 percent from October and 14.5 percent from November 2009. The median price reduction was $19,228, down 1 percent month-to-month and 19.5 percent year-over-year.
The ratio of price reduction amount to list price was 7.6 percent, up 1.7 percent from October.
Inventory typically goes down month-to-month in November, when many people decide to wait until after the holidays to sell, and this month was no exception. Inventory was down 3.8 percent from October. On a year-over-year basis, however, inventory continued to trend up: it rose 11.6 percent, to 629,086 properties.
More than half of sellers had slashed their listing prices in 11 out of 26 markets: Philadelphia; Seattle; Boston; Orange County, Calif.; Baltimore; Chicago; Orlando, Fla.; Minneapolis/St. Paul; Jacksonville, Fla.; Phoenix; and Las Vegas.
Jacksonville led the pack with 56.2 percent of its listings discounted, followed closely by Phoenix at 56.1 percent. As in October, Denver had the smallest share of discounted listings, at 34.2 percent.
