In August, half of Redfin home listings in Philly and Delco were considered ‘extra stale’

About half of home listings in Philadelphia and Delaware Counties in August were what the online real estate brokerage Redfin called “extra stale,” meaning the properties hadn’t found a buyer after 60 days.

Likewise, about half of homes for sale in August nationwide were still on the market after 60 days, according to a Redfin analysis of listings on its website published last month. That’s the highest percentage for August since 2019. And August was the fifth straight month in which the share of “extra stale” listings was higher than at the same time the year before.

The median number of days that homes sit on the market tends to rise heading into winter and drop heading into spring, as demand and supply ebb and flow.

Real estate activity has slowed in the years since mortgage interest rates were at record lows and homes were flying off the market. The elevated mortgage rates of the last couple years combined with continually rising home prices have priced some potential buyers out of the market. Since the buyers still in the market aren’t facing as much competition, they can be pickier and take more time to choose a home.

The most desirable properties go first.

“If a home is still on the market after a few weeks, buyers assume there’s something wrong with it,” Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, said in a statement. “That’s why it’s so important to price your home to move quickly. Buyers see the days on market and when it starts to tick up, it’s like a scarlet letter.”

The typical U.S. home for sale was on the market for 37 days before going under contract in August. That’s about a week longer than the year before.

In the region that Redfin defined as Philadelphia and Delaware Counties, the typical home for sale in August was on the market for 41 days before going under contract. That’s two more days than last August.

In the region, defined as Montgomery, Chester, and Bucks Counties, the typical home for sale in August was on the market for about half that time — 22 days, which was a week longer than at the same time last year. Compared to the Philadelphia-Delaware County region, fewer homes in this region sat on the market for at least 60 days — 35% of listings.

Jake Markovitz, an associate broker with the Karrie Gavin Group at Elfant Wissahickon Realtors in Philadelphia, said he’s seen that homes are selling a bit slower than they used to but not so slow that it should cause alarm. He said that homes selling in weeks instead of days is a sign of a healthier market that “we all want to see.”

“It feels like we’re getting back to normal, not that we’re experiencing a crash,” said Markovitz, who is on the board of directors for the Greater Philadelphia Association of Realtors. “Looking at the big picture, we had a couple crazy years there as a market, as a society. Coming back down from that, when you zoom out a little bit, it’s back to normal. It’s not necessarily a dire situation. It just feels dire because the last couple years were crazy.”

But “you still have ambitious sellers who don’t want to reconcile that the market has changed since where we were a few years ago,” he said. “If [a home] isn’t priced right and it isn’t taking into account the reality of the market, it’s gonna sit. You can’t be quite as ambitious as we were a couple years ago.”

Philadelphia’s real estate market is more stable than those of other cities and doesn’t typically experience very high highs or very low lows. The Philadelphia-Delaware County region’s share of “extra stale” listings was in the middle of the road in Redfin’s analysis of the 50 most-populous metropolitan areas.

Seattle saw the quickest home sales in August. The typical home there sold in 12 days. Homes sold slowest in West Palm Beach, Fla., where the typical home took 79 days to find a buyer.