RE: Real Estate Podcast

Clint C. Galliano (00:18.15)
All right.

Mark one.

Here's something strange about our market in May. Sellers have put a quarter fewer homes on the market than they did a year ago. It's down almost 26%. So you think things slowed down, right? Wrong. Closings are up 23%. Buyers didn't leave. Homes just got harder to find. Let's talk about

Clint C. Galliano (00:52.042)
How'd that go? All right, let's run with it.

Ben Harang (00:52.3)
Like it. Like it.

All right.

All right, here comes the intro, you ready?

Ben Harang (01:05.144)
Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the RE Real Estate Podcast. I'm Ben Harang and here with my co-host, Clint Galliano. How you doing today, Clint?

Clint C. Galliano (01:18.934)
I'm doing wonderful, Ben. How you doing?

Ben Harang (01:21.868)
Man, I'm doing terrific. The rain stopped. We got a got a ton of rain last week, but things calmed down. the summer's getting hot, it's warming up. but life is good. Life is good. So what what are we talking about today?

Clint C. Galliano (01:41.409)
So what happens when fewer homes hit the market but buyers keep showing up? That's the whole story of May and it changes the math for whether you're selling or buying right now. We're doing our monthly market check. First we're going to cover the May numbers for the Bayou Board as a whole and then we're going to zoom in on Lafourche and Terrebonne side by side so we can see how the two parishes are behaving differently.

Ben Harang (02:08.447)
All right. So who's who's this for? It it would be for anybody that's watching the local market, buyers, sellers and owners, just trying to keep an eye on their value.

Clint C. Galliano (02:21.334)
So our first takeaway is that there's a supply squeeze going on. New listings dropped hard and the months of supply tightened across the board.

Ben Harang (02:34.605)
So the second takeaway is the demand held strong. So pending and closing sales were up double digits and prices firmed up month over month. So the buyers didn't go anywhere, but the same buyers were looking at fewer properties.

Clint C. Galliano (02:53.686)
And the third takeaway, two parishes are diverging. Lafourche is the tighter, pricier market, and Terrebonne is the one tightening fastest. So if you put all of that together, the headline writes itself. We're drifting towards a seller favorable market heading into summer, even though the calendar says balanced.

Ben Harang (03:17.855)
All right. So what we have is a supply squeeze. the the buyers didn't go anywhere, the sellers did. So new listings were two hundred and sixteen in May of twenty twenty five down to one sixty in May of twenty twenty six. That's almost a twenty six percent drop. Year to date, yeah it is. It is. And we closing more.

Clint C. Galliano (03:42.262)
That's crazy.

Ben Harang (03:46.474)
Year to date new listings are down eight point three percent. so that's not as drastic a drop, but it's still it's still down and and the there's still pressure from the buy side.

Clint C. Galliano (04:00.233)
And so inventory of homes for sale is 914. Well, it was 914. It dropped to 804. So that's 12 % year over year.

Ben Harang (04:13.237)
Mm-hmm. And and this is where it gets interesting because since we've been doing this market update, the the Bayu Board MLS as a whole has always been has has been in a buyer's posture with more than six months of inventory. So the inventory months of inventory went down from eight point one months down to six

point zero months, that's a twenty six percent drop. That's the line between a buyer leaning and buyer and seller leaning market, which means we're essentially boardwide, we're in a balanced market with hotspots and micro markets within that.

Clint C. Galliano (05:02.834)
And like we stated, sellers are the ones who pull back, the buyers. There's fewer new listings and steady demand. So it's shrinking the shelf, or shrinking the inventory, really. Six months of supply is textbook balance line. And we slid right down to it from much softer eight months a year ago.

Ben Harang (05:27.371)
And then the demand stayed strong and that's that's board wide. The pending sales are up to a hundred and forty nine versus a hundred and twenty eight a year ago. with that's that's an increase of almost twenty percent.

Clint C. Galliano (05:47.191)
Close sales were 133 and they're up to 163. That's almost 23%. And year to date closings are up almost 19%.

Ben Harang (06:00.733)
Mm-hmm. So the median sales price, and we've talked about why we use median as opposed to average. The median sales price went from two hundred and thirteen thousand nine forty, almost two fourteen, it's up to two hundred and twenty thousand five hundred now with a which is three point one percent increase for the month.

But the year to date actually is down two point four percent to two hundred and five thousand. that we may wanna look into kind of what what happened there, Clint, but it goes up for the month and for the year is actually down. so

Clint C. Galliano (06:46.214)
And I think we had a couple of months where that median sale price year to date was down significantly. It looks like it climbed back up for the month of May. so that would explain that discrepancy. So percent of list price received is 96.6. So that's essentially full price.

Ben Harang (06:59.191)
Yeah.

Ben Harang (07:02.795)
Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Clint C. Galliano (07:15.826)
much of a discount across the board and pun intended for the Bayou board area for what's going on. Sellers are giving up under four cents on the dollar.

Ben Harang (07:32.993)
Well the affordability index is one twenty seven for the month, which is flat, but it's up five point four percent year to date. so buying power has quietly improved during this year.

Ben Harang (07:51.256)
So this is the counter counterweight to segment one. Buyer buyers absorbed the available homes and then some. Prices firmed month over month. And sellers are getting nearly their full asking price. The the the month figure rising while the year to date median dips is a reminder that one month is a snapshot and not a trend.

So why don't you take Lafouche versus Terrebonne Clint?

Clint C. Galliano (08:26.26)
Yeah, so the data that we're going over for Bayou Board that comes from Louisiana Realtors supplies that to us through tracking sales and everything. The parish data comes from RPR Realtors Property Resource. It's another tool that we use that's provided by the National Association of Realtors to give us

market information and help us do comparative market analysis and stuff. So they track sales in there also. So both parishes registered as balanced on RPR's gauge, but the details tell two different stories. Lafourche is a tighter, pricier market. The median sold price was almost $230,000 and that's up

3.5%, a little bit better than 3.5 % for the month. And the median list on active homes was $255,000. And sold to list was almost 97%. And homes are moving in a median of 42 days. Month supply is 5.63, and that's down 17, a little bit over 17 % for the year. Now, all of that said, the majority,

of Lafourche Parish Market is by activity in Thibodaux So that Thibodaux area, so that kind of drives the market, but it's enough to where it still sets that whole parish-wide market numbers pretty high.

Ben Harang (10:06.263)
Mm-hmm.

Ben Harang (10:16.149)
Yeah, and that and that's the micro market I was talking about or referring to a few minutes ago. which is still crazy in my mind, but terra Lafourche is is is tighter in pricier, but Terrebonne is tightening the fastest. The median sold price

Is $202,500, which is up 9.5% for the month. The active median list is $245,000. Sold to list is 96.3%. The median days on the market is 71%. Most supply is 5.92, but down 30.8% over the year.

the steepest tightening of the two. So it this is the first time, correct me if I'm wrong, Clint, I've seen Terrebonne leaning towards a buyer's market since the interest rates and the insurance changed.

Clint C. Galliano (11:23.946)
Yeah, and that actually, we've kind of been watching this trend while we didn't look at Terrebonne Parish as a whole every month on the market updates. We've been watching this trend since the beginning of the year on inventory and it started coming down and it's like, that's interesting. And now here we are and they're pretty darn close between the two parishes.

Ben Harang (11:28.653)
Mm-hmm.

Ben Harang (11:51.039)
Mm. They they are. They are, which is which is good for everybody.

Clint C. Galliano (12:00.406)
Another point I want to cover is the board's days on market until sale actually rose year over year to 112 days, while RPR's median monthly days dropped in both parishes, 42 and 71 respectively for Lafourche and Terrebonne. It's not a contradiction. They measure different things. Board number is the average of everything that closed in May.

year over year and that's also four parishes. RPR is a month over month median and it's only Terrebonne or only Lafourche. So always, even though the number may be called the same, ask what specific number you're looking at and what area does it cover before you panic or celebrate.

Ben Harang (12:55.573)
Yeah. 'cause you and I do this every day and numbers get get confusing if you're not looking at We're looking at and it's I'm I still try to wrap my brain around. We have fewer listings, more sales, prices are going up, you know. It is it's just a wild market. so what it what does it mean for you? If you're thinking about selling, the low inventory is working in your favor.

And homes are clearing and nearly full price, but pricing right out of the gate still matters because the homes sitting the longest are the ones that missed on price.

Clint C. Galliano (13:39.464)
And if you're buying, affordability is better than it was a year ago, but the shelf is thinner. So that means that there's less homes for you to choose from. Be ready to move when the right one comes up. And we were just talking about that. Hesitation will cost more in a tightening market because by the time you decide you want to make a move, that home is probably already under contract.

Ben Harang (14:07.469)
Yeah, and if and if you're just an owner watching the market, estimated values up over the year about two point two percent in Lafouche and one point three percent in Terrebonne So your equity's quietly building. but if you stay on the sideline too long, it that could that could change. So if you're gonna sell your house,

If you're thinking about it, now's the time to get it ready. If you're buying the house, be ready to move, like Clint said. because a cas casual observer on the buy side will never f never find the house. there needs to be some aggression and and pre planning to to pounce on a house when it's available.

Clint C. Galliano (14:53.266)
All right. You ready for some homework?

Ben Harang (14:56.361)
No. No, I quit I quit that a long time ago, Clint.

Clint C. Galliano (15:02.282)
That's why I was asking the audience. All right, so here's the homework. Pull up in your neighborhood and ask one question. How many homes are actually for sale right now near me compared to what's sold in the last few months? That ratio, not the headlines, tells you whether your block is in a seller's market or a buyer's market. So write it down, keep track of it, and we'll revisit it next month when we run the June numbers.

Ben Harang (15:32.32)
All right. So just a little recap. There are fewer listings, more sales, firmer prices, and a market that's quietly tilting back towards the the sellers as we get into summer. The first day of summer was was last week on June twenty first. So we we're in the doldrums of summer right now, but the market real estate market is as hot as the weather is around here.

Clint C. Galliano (16:02.006)
you

Ben Harang (16:03.861)
And that and it's getting it's getting hot. It's getting hot. I'm I'm spending evenings at the ballpark with my grandchildren. It's I left a hat in my truck one day. I had to just walk back to my truck to get it. I couldn't couldn't be out in the sun without the hat. so if you have any qu any questions, this is obviously some deep stuff. you can you can find us on RE: Real Estate Podcast dot com and and drop us a note and we'll try to include

your question in in June's market update.

Clint C. Galliano (16:38.836)
Yep. So in June, and actually we'll probably wind up doing June's market update in about three weeks or so. We usually get the data about the middle of the month. So we release that market update episode right after that. Biggest things, like Ben already mentioned, go to rerealestatepodcast.com. You can find our YouTube channel link there, or you can listen to episodes.

directly on the website or alternatively, whatever your favorite podcast application is, you can use that link on the website to subscribe to it or anywhere where you get your podcasts. All right, Ben, that's another one in the can.

Ben Harang (17:29.003)
Like, subscribe, and check us out at RE Real Estate Podcast dot com. All right, Clint, have a good one.

Clint C. Galliano (17:34.278)
Amen. You too.