Wisconsin Home Sales Drop Sharply In June

Home sales in Wisconsin continue to lag last year’s numbers.

The latest report from the Wisconsin Realtors Association found sales of existing homes in the first six months of the year were down 5.1 percent from the same period in 2018.

Declining inventory remains the biggest factor in the sales drop.

Economist David Clark of Marquette University said the state’s supply of existing homes will eventually increase as older homeowners start to downsize in larger numbers, but that’s not likely to happen in the short term.

“The inventory problem is a long-term problem,” he said. “It simply takes a while for those types of demographic trends to work themselves out.”

There were 8,517 reported sales in June, down 9.7 percent from the same month last year.

The median home price in the state rose 10.3 percent, to $215,000.

Clark said that, even with the increase, Wisconsin home prices are still more affordable than in other parts of the country.

“You can still afford to buy a lot of housing, but you’ve got to be able to find it,” he said. “As we’ve been saying for a while, you’ve got to move quickly when that right home is identified. They simply don’t stay on the market very long.”