Charlottesville area homes are selling at higher prices on average this year than they were in 2023, but they’re sitting on the market longer, and total sales are down. That roughly matches what’s happening nationwide, but there’s a key difference, according to local realtor Paul McArtor.
“Charlottesville is so tied to the university, government, and hospitals, so we have a natural churn of people that have to leave and come,” McArtor says. “Our market is just kind of going to follow that cycle.”
According to McArtor, that means both sellers and buyers should feel confident in making moves these days, even as the season comes to a close and many folks around the country look toward next spring to act on their housing plans.
Homeowners going to market today should expect a roughly 5 percent uptick in their selling price from this time last year, according to Zillow data, with current typical home values sitting at $490,890. The local median sales price, per Redfin numbers, is up quite a bit more, to $550,000, a nearly 20 percent increase from August 2023.
Buyers, meanwhile, can expect to see lower interest rates than they did last year (in September, the Federal Reserve lowered key interest rate by half a percentage point). McArtor notes that those rates won’t be anywhere near as low as they were at the start of COVID-19, but they are inching closer to pre-pandemic levels.
Will sellers see the effects of the slight uptick in time-on-market across the local landscape? Maybe, maybe not, McArtor says.
“That is a little bit of a flaw, especially because many buyers and sellers have only been paying attention since the pandemic,” he says. “If you compare us to a year ago or two years ago, homes are staying on the market longer. But if you compare us to five years ago, this is normal.”
McArtor advises sellers to act like they’ve seen it all before. Sure, some homes will sell on their first weekend, but a couple weeks or even months of waiting is no reason to panic.
Critically, inventory remains low locally, as it is nationally. Housing availability is slowly ticking up, but McArtor says we haven’t yet reached a balanced market. Part of the low supply is driven by limited space to build, but the 3-year-old interest rate nadir is also making some buyers hold onto their property when they might otherwise have sold.
One real estate trend McArtor suggests is not reflected in reality is the notion that housing prices are slumping toward the end of the selling season. Observers might see single-unit price drops, he says, but that actually points to higher-than-comp opening prices, rather than an actual market dip.
In McArtor’s experience, sellers do need to be more proactive now than they were when the market was red hot in 2022. “They need to prep their houses to be sold nowadays,” he says. “For that stretch of time, it really felt like a seller just didn’t have to do anything. It didn’t matter if it needed repairs, someone was going to buy it. Because there is a little bit more inventory, prices are still high, and interest rates are coming down, buyers aren’t necessarily willing to just take anything.”
For prospective homeowners waiting to see if interest rates drop further, McArtor says there’s no need. The market is showing signs of pent-up demand, and prices could continue to climb, so buy now and refinance if rates do decline. “If you go ahead and buy now, you could get today’s price with tomorrow’s interest rates,” he says.