photo by: Shutterstock

News and notes from around town:

There’s a saying about having your cake and eating it too. (That dilemma has never kept me awake at night, although too much buttercream frosting occasionally does.) Regardless, I guess the saying applies to Lawrence home sales in May. The number of homes sold in the market increased, but the average selling price decreased.

In other words, it was good news on both the affordability and availability front — at least for one month.

Lawrence home sales in May rose by 5.2% compared to May 2023 totals. The Lawrence market produced 122 homes sales for the month. The latest totals have Lawrence on pace to end a three-year losing streak.

Home sales year-to-date through May are up 11.8% from the same period a year ago. If you remember, Lawrence home sales kind of fell off a cliff in 2023. They ended the year down 21.9%, which was the largest decline in recent memory. It also was the third consecutive year that home sales in Lawrence had fallen.

There’s still a long ways to go — seven more months of data — before Lawrence can put that losing streak to bed. But the numbers are headed in the right direction. The Lawrence market has had 369 home sales through May, up from 330 through May 2023. One or two bad months could wipe out those gains, but some real estate leaders are expressing optimism that that buying conditions will remain favorable for awhile.

“Last month we saw mortgage rates decrease, offering some relief to homebuyers,” Jill Ballew, president of the Lawrence Board of Realtors, said in the organization’s monthly report that was recently released. “This month they have dropped again, and the forecasts suggest mortgage rates may now stabilize for a while, rather than drop further. he Federal Reserve is watching inflation closely and their next move downward isn’t expected until later in the year. However, this is all good news for homebuyers, as lower rates translate into more spending power.”

As for housing prices, the good news on that front may be more of a blip than a bonanza. The median selling prices for homes in May was $321,000. That was down 5.6% from the May 2023 median selling price of $339,950.

But selling prices can vary a lot from month to month as the type of homes for sale in May 2024 may have been significantly different than the type in May 2023, for instance. To gauge whether selling prices are truly going up or down, it is best to look at several months worth of data. Right now, the larger data set suggests home prices are still on the rise in Lawrence.

Through May, the median selling price of Lawrence homes is $315,000, up 5% from the $300,000 median that the the market had posted through May 2023. That 5% increase — if it holds for the year — actually would be a move in the wrong direction for those who are concerned about housing affordability.

While it is hard to realistically expect home prices to decline, there has been some hope that the rate of increase would slow. At 5%, that’s not the case. The median selling price of homes ended 2023 up 4.2% from a year earlier. But if you are looking for good news (and if you keep refusing to eat cake, you should take good news where you can get it,) home prices aren’t increasing nearly as fast as they did in 2021 or 2022. In 2021, Lawrence home prices rose 11.5% and in 2022 they were up 10%.

•••

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World photo

Rusty Taco, pictured Jan. 18, 2022, has opened at 945 Massachusetts St. in downtown Lawrence.

If you are a bigger fan of tacos than cake, the news is not great. One of downtown Lawrence’s larger Mexican restaurants will soon close. Rusty Taco, 945 Massachusetts St., posted on its Facebook page today that it will close its Lawrence location on June 30.

The restaurant has been open in Lawrence for about 2.5 years. The social media post did not give a specific reason for the closing, but rather just thanked customers for their support. The Mexican restaurant business is a crowded one in Lawrence, and some of the regional chains haven’t always fared well. Torchy’s Taco — which like Rusty’s is a Texas-based chain — closed its south Iowa Street location in 2022 after about two years in business.