Available homes for sale and the amount of time those homes stayed on the market both fell in December, according to the latest report from the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors.
Kent Cravens, executive vice president for GAAR, said there is only two and a half months of available inventory in Albuquerque.
"We should have six to seven," he said. "This comes down to there not being very much for sale. We could use another 3,000 to 4,000 houses on the market."
Cravens said the number of available homes for sale in the metro area are at a historic low.
"If you look in the past when we had say 5,000 to 6,000 available homes on the market, we had a lot of building going on," Cravens said. "Now we don't have that much home building and we are not really adding back to the inventory at any clip at all."
The median sales price in December was $209,950, up 8.3% from December 2017, according to the report. The low inventory could cause prices to rise more, Cravens said.
According to the report, which is based on Southwest Multiple Listing Service data, between December 2017 and December 2018, days on market until sale averaged 53 days, down 1.9%; inventory of homes for sale was just over 2,000, down 16.6%; and new listings were reported at 870, up 11.8%.
