Reading market trends without fooling yourself

01"The market" is not one number

Real estate has no single price. A town moves one way, a street inside it another, a small condo a third. The month matters too. So "the market is up" means little until you ask which homes, where, and over what window.

Wiew reports each figure at its own grain and stamps it with a date. A recorded sale is one kind of fact. A modeled estimate is another, and it always arrives as a range, never a false-precise dollar amount. You should always be able to see which is which.

A number without a date and a place is a rumor.

02Price trends tell you direction, not your price

A price trend is the change in typical sale prices, over time, for a defined set of homes. Read it as direction and speed, not as your number. It shows that the current is moving; it does not show where your particular boat sits.

Prefer the median, the middle sale, over the average. One large sale in a small town can pull an average upward while most homes did nothing, and the median resists that. Watch the sample size too: a trend built on a handful of sales in a quiet month is noisy, not wrong, just uncertain.

A town trend never sets your price. Your home's value is a band, anchored by recent sales of genuinely comparable homes nearby, and a real band widens when good comparables are scarce.

03Days on market is a speed reading with blind spots

Days on market, or DOM, measures how long homes sit before they go under agreement. Track the median for an area and you have a decent thermometer. Falling DOM means homes are moving faster, usually demand outrunning supply. Rising DOM means buyers have room to breathe.

It has blind spots. A seller can pull a stale listing and relist it fresh, resetting the clock. Homes that never sell simply drop out of the count. Both make the typical DOM look shorter than the real experience of selling.

04Inventory and absorption show who has the leverage

Two numbers sit under most market talk. Inventory is how many homes are for sale. Absorption is how fast they are selling. Divide the first by the second and you get months of supply: how long today's stock would last if nothing new were listed.

• Low months of supply. Homes clear faster than they arrive, and leverage tilts toward sellers.
• High months of supply. Homes pile up, and buyers gain room to negotiate.

People quote a rough balance point, but it drifts by state, town and property type. What signals a seller's market for condos in one city can mean something else for single-family homes in another. Follow the direction of supply, not a magic threshold.

05List-to-sale shows the gap between ask and reality

The list-to-sale ratio compares what a home sold for against what it was last asking. Above 100 percent, homes are closing over ask, the fingerprint of competition. Below 100 percent, discounts are common and buyers hold some cards.

One catch: the list price in that ratio is usually the last one, after any cuts. A home reduced twice and then sold near its final ask can look disciplined while the seller actually gave ground. Pair the ratio with the price trend and days on market to see the whole move.

For you, this is posture, not promise. A hot ratio says come prepared and expect company. A soft one says there may be room. Neither tells you whether the home fits your money and your plans.

06Seasonality means you compare like with like

Markets breathe with the calendar. Across much of the country, listings swell in spring, competition peaks, then activity thins into winter. In Massachusetts the New England winter makes that dip pronounced. Prices, days on market and volume all move with the season.

So a drop from October to January can be ordinary seasonal cooling, not a real decline. The comparison is to the same season a year earlier, or to a trend that already accounts for the calendar. Otherwise you will mistake winter for a downturn every year.

Judge a market against its own season. Anything else is comparing a beach in July to the same beach in February and calling it erosion.