Wednesday, September 14, 2011

The long hot summer has come and gone...our real estate market continues to simmer.

August sales were 605 in Ada County, an increase of 43% compared to sales in August 2010.

Historically, August sales are even with July. August 2011 had 7.3% more sales than July 2011.

I am really happy to report that year-to-date 2011 sales, which total 4,192 are ahead of YTD 2010 sales; 3,947. As of the end of August we are 245 units ahead of year-to-date 2010! That’s a 6.2% increase.

Of our total sales in August… 45% were distressed….up 3% from July 2011. In January 2011 57% of our sales were distressed. (Short sales 17%, REO’s 22% and HUD sales 4%). Distressed sales continue to cast a long shadow over the market, but they are no longer the “majority” of transactions!

For homes sold in August, the average number of “Days on Market” was 81. This is down from 90 days last year this time and down from 93 days in January 2011.

Pending sales at the end of August were 885; and decrease of 6% from the end of July.  Looking back at pending sales from March 2011 to August 2011, we see an average near 900 at the end of each month.  This is another sign of the long term recovery we are experiencing. The percentage of pending sales in distress was essentially unchanged from July, totaling 44% overall. We are now at five consecutive months below 50%.

August median home price increased 2.5% from July.  Overall median price was $156,000; down 7% from August 2010. This is the highest median price we’ve had so far this year.

New Homes median price for August 2011 was $246,000; a 32% increase over August 2010.

The number of houses available for sale at the end of August fell below 2,500 for the first time since March 2006. This is down 3% from July and 32% less than last year at this time.

At the same time, the percentage of active inventory that is distressed increased almost 2% from June to 35%.  This increase reverses the trend of the last five months; which is, in part, due to the continuing reduction of available inventory. We remain well below the 40% levels set last spring….when we were on the increase.

In Ada County we have 4 months of inventory on hand…historically this number defines a strong “seller’s market”.  The price category in shortest supply is <$119,000 with 3 months available. This is closely followed by the $200,000 to $249,000 with 4.2 months.  Consumption of inventory is expanding to all price ranges. In the price ranges from $250,000 to $499,000 we have about 6 months of available inventory. These are the lowest numbers in more than a year!

There is also positive news on some of the higher priced inventory; $500,000 to $699,999 inventory dropped for a fourth month in a row to 6.9!

We continue to “benefit” from inventory levels much lower than national average.

Courtesy of Marc Lebowitz  Ada County Association of Realtors

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