Buying a home is an investment. There are numerous things to consider when looking at buying a home. There are the basic laws of supply and demand. When the demand is high and the supply is low, prices rise. When there is more supply than demand, prices drop. It is often a slow moving trend that is multifaceted.

The National Association of Realtors published as study about the flow of home sales from the point of view of buyers and sellers. Is it a buyers’ or sellers’ market in Wyoming? The NAR looked across all 50 states, and Wyoming is different than most states. These maps were made using data from February to April or 2016.

First let’s look at what the NAR called the Buyer Traffic Index. This map gauges how well houses are selling in any given state. This could be considered the market demand. Wyoming and Alaska are graded as week. This comes as no surprise with the news about the oil and coal industries. Simply put there are not a lot of people buying houses compared to the rest of the country.

Key = Blue - Week | Orange - Strong | Red - Very Strong

National Association of Realtors - Buyer Traffic Index
National Association of Realtors - Buyer Traffic Index
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Next we can look at the Seller Traffic Index. This is an idea about how many sellers are in a given market.  This could be considered the market supply. Wyoming was rated as moderate. That means we have slightly more people selling houses than Colorado or Nebraska.

Key = Blue - Week | Light Orange - Moderate | Dark Orange - Strong

National Association of Realtors - Sellers Traffic Index
National Association of Realtors - Sellers Traffic Index
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If we look at this data alone, which is only a small portion of the big picture, it would say we have a buyers’ market. Typically this time of year in Casper more houses go on the market, but could this year be different with all the layoffs and bad news in the mining industries? There is no crystal ball that will give us the answer. All we can do is watch and listen to the numbers.

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