Milwaukee - State of the Market

[Marcus Auerbach]

I am on record for stating publicly that I don't see a down turn in 2019, at least for our market here. We are technically way overdue for a downswing after 7 years of going up, but I can't find it in the data. On the most fundamental level it comes down to supply and demand - and while we have very strong demand, supply keeps shrinking! 

13.5% fewer houses active for sale and fewer new listings than last year. We see a similar picture in the surrounding counties and across all price points. As of late even luxury listings are getting multiple offers. I hope this is just winter weather related (we had a very cold winter) and we see more inventory soon. 

Also note how the median asking price has shifted up to 120-160k, which BTW is still far off replacement cost and cost of new construction cost. You would think that more people would cash out and sell, many are definitely in an equity position and mortgage rates have fallen again (totally unexpected as of last year) to about 4%.

[Jay Hinrichs]

Originally posted by @Taylor Chiu:

@Marcus Auerbach Thank you for posting this! Interesting that inventory is down so much, despite high demand. Have any theories as to why? 

Also, do you have any stats on population growth for the last year or two?

one thing I see is in these bigger cities in the mid west much of the urban core is more renter dominated than other urban cores.

and landlords are doing a better job with their work so you don't see as many failed landlords or burnt out landlords as in the past. 

so that inventory is not hitting the market