Coronavirus Creates Big Drop in Luxury Home Inventory Across Major U.S. Markets

Posted by Leo Clark. on Saturday, May 9th, 2020 at 1:39pm.

March brought about challenging circumstances for many industries in the United States. The housing market was certainly no exception with homes priced at a $1 million and up seeing an immediate drop in inventory. 

According to recent data summarized by World Property Journal, the new supply of homes for sale priced over $1 million fell 29 points from last March-April. On March 15th, a total of 66,528 homes were listed for sale priced at $1 million or above across the 50 largest U.S. metro areas. Three weeks later around 10K more homes were listed for sale while 10,708 were taken off the market, resulting in a 1% decrease in the total supply.

Although the drop may not seem significant, it's a drastic change but compared to the previous year where supply increased 28%. During the same period, homes priced under $250,000 saw a 34% increase in supply between March 15 and April 20 of 2020. While that's a positive contrast to the higher price point data, its still much less than the 59% increase during the same time in 2019.

There's no doubt the high end home market slowdown is hitting the most expensive cities in the country the hardest. According to the data, San Francisco saw the biggest decline at a whopping 75 percent points over the previous year. Boston, another highly competitive market for higher end homes saw a drop of 66 percent points. Only two of the 50 areas included in the study, Salt Lake City & Phoenix, saw their supply increase over the March-April period of this year. Despite the overall  inventory increase in those markets, more expensive listings are seeing the largest shortfall and the increases in supply are only at the lower end of the market pricing points.

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