Here is your local real estate market update for October 2024. If you'd like to watch instead of read: https://youtu.be/EEF_k4vzZbI (I’d love your support of my YouTube channel by subscribing!)

With autumn in full swing, the Des Moines metro housing market continues to show opportunity for both buyers and sellers. We've seen substantial growth in active listings and in closed sales both month-over-month and year-over-year, demonstrating what we hope to be a strong and balanced fall market.

The biggest change from last month is in closed sales, which you may recall were down 10% month over month and year over year. But this month we are up an average of 20% both month over month and year over year.

But let's get to our active listing stats first....

Active listings in the Des Moines metro rose to 3,938 in October, making a slight increase of 1.3% compared to September’s 3,889 active listings. Year-over-year comparisons for October show an impressive 19% increase in active listings compared to the 3,309 active listings of one year ago.

October showed a strong performance in home sales, increasing 18.6% to 1,154 homes sold compared to September’s 973 sales. Last year, 955 homes were sold in October, which represents a jump of 20.8% in year-over-year measurements.

Contracts written in October dipped 5.2% with 1,087 homes pending, compared to last month’s 1,146 pending sales. Compared to 2023, pending sales rose 11.6%, from the 974 contracts written in October 2023.

In October, we saw the median sale price dip by 0.03% to $289,900 compared to last month’s $290,000. In 2023, the median sale price was $274,745 creating a 5.5% increase year-over-year.

Days on the market increased this month by 4.08% to 51 days compared to September’s 49 days on the market. Year-over-year, we saw a significant increase of 18.6% from the 43 days on the market in October 2023.