Real Estate Analysis and Commentary in Tulsa

It is hard to believe we are half way through the year 2023. The market has had some big changes over the past year, that's for sure. With the FED increasing interest rates over the past year, let's take a look at how that has effected the Tulsa MSA real estate market. July saw less homes on the market than 1 year ago which resulted in fewer pending listings. Closed listings were down 18% year over year, which is a result of fewer listings in earlier months as well. Primarily May and June of this year. 



Year to date, sales are down about 22.5% in the Tulsa MSA. Pending listings are down about 17%. New listings are down about 13%. We are starting to see the active inventory creep up slightly, about 1.5% over last year, which means homes are taking slightly longer to sell. Days on the market are up from 17 in 2022 to 31 in 20223. With the tight inventory, prices are still increasing despite the higher interest rates.

August is typically a statistically good month for closings, however, pending listings will most likely drop as the activity around August tends to be slightly slower than other months historically speaking. As we transition from summer to fall, look the market to pick back up in September and October then begin a slight slow down for the winter months.  

City of Tulsa Mid Year housing figues show strong list to sales price ratio. What's that mean? It means homes are selling at 99.1% of the list price, basically for full asking price. 

Median price also increased slightly. Months of inventory remain very low and still favor a strong seller's market, which explains the list to sold price ratio as well. 

February 2023 sales trailed February 2022's pace. While increasing slightly over January 2023's number of pending sales. The total number of listings taken was almost identical over the same February 2022-2023 time period. Low inventory continues and as a result prices have been slowing increasing.  

What's this mean? Pending sales are normally a good indicator of what closed sales will look like over the next 2 months. Look for a stable to slowly increasing median sales price in the market over the next couple of months as we enter the busy summer selling season. 

It's December 27and so much has happened over the past 12 months in the housing market. Let's take a look at a few of the highlights. The FED has raised rates as promised and we've gone from multiple offers on a property in the first half of the year to seller paid rate buydowns in the latter part of the year. What does that mean for home prices? Here are the Median sales prices for the Entire MLS over the past couple years compared to the Tulsa County median sales price over the same time period. 

January 2019	$155,000
January 2020	$169,749
January 2021	$185,000
January 2022	$207,000

The MLS covers the Eastern half of Oklahoma, which is a large area and although these stats don't mean much to anyone, let's look a little more in depth and see how they compare to Tulsa County. 

January 2019	$160,375
January 2020	$175,965
January 2021	$211,950
January 2022	$224,555

Tulsa County is the largest county and trends slightly higher than the MLS as a whole. Here's a graph of the above data. The bottom line is real estate cannot be looked at as a short term investment. Historically speaking, year over year the Tulsa area continues to be a stable housing market.