2020 Statistics by Price Range

All statistics courtesy of BrightMLS.

One of the more illuminating ways to look at the real estate market is by price range. The reality is that people who are listing at different price points will have drastically divergent selling experiences, and that shapes their personal view of what the overall market may be like. However, it's useful to see how other price ranges may have contrasting viewpoints. 

For this post, we are also going to look at some new graph styles. We will start with the typical by county year in review. After that, we will look at the last five years for each county in turn, to get a more historical perspective on how things may have shifted and to see if there are any insights that may come up from that data.

Let's start with the more timely last year first.

2020 Price Ranges by County

The middle range of properties are definitely the largest contributor to the market as a whole, especially in New Castle.

And that is even more evident in number of sales. Whereas Chester County has more sales in the higher price ranges (as its area includes affluent suburbs of Philadelphia), the sheer volume of sales in the lower price ranges make that the heart of the real estate market.

It's also where most of the new listings are, which makes sense as that is the most active sector. The two graphs are almost identical, as availability is key, and it seems that turnover is more active in those price ranges as well. ​​​​​​​

There seems to be a cap on just how low the average days to sell can be, with what appears to be a logarithmic dampening as you get to the lowest extremes as you get towards the extremely short time on the market in the lower price ranges. ​​​​​​​

Historical Price Ranges - New Castle County

Let's take a look at the historical price ranges for the last 5 years in New Castle County.

What is rather interesting here is how things have marginally shifted in the lower end. $200-$300 has always been the core, but $100-200 has been shifting downwards as $300-400 has been shifting up slightly. Is this just due to price increases? Let's take a look at number of sales, and see how that relates.

What is interesting is just how much activity there really is in the lower price range, which has to take place to offset the lowered price. That being said, you can clearly see a shift in number of sales, as the extreme lower end goes down, but the middle price ranges go up. Let's see how availability has changed too.

As with the earlier graphs, there are far fewer properties in the lower price ranges. This likely means that as sales prices have increased, this has just naturally shifted those markets in conjunction with the sale price increase. 

Now onto how that will affect days to sell.

Again, the far fewer properties available at the higher price points mean those properties stay on the market way longer than those in the lower, more active ranges. Note the marked decrease in $200-300 and $300-400 in the last year however, where those are selling very quickly even compared to last year.

Historical Price Ranges - Chester County

It will be interesting to see if there was a slowdown in any price ranges over the last year for any price ranges, due to the real estate market completely shutting down in Chester County. Let's see if there was any significant change in overall volume.

If anything, things slightly went up the last year. The earlier shutdown seems to have been completely compensated for with the rest of the year.​​​​​​​

Like New Castle, there seems to be a similar shift upwards in price range over the last five years. 

And new listings also shifted in the same way, meaning this is likely an sale price affecting the distribution of sales within the price ranges.​​​​​​​

And finally, the average days to sell is also similar to New Castle County, although in this case the higher end properties seem to have also shifted downward far more. Overall, the time on the market seems to have gone down by almost a third in most price ranges over the last five years.