Ada County, End Of Year Sales Really Kicks In…

Yesterday I posted a combined report for Ada and Canyon counties from Pioneer Title Company. This morning is amore detailed report of Ada County.

by Marc Lebowitz, RCE, CAE

ACAR Executive Director

Sales in October 2012 were 631 in Ada County, an increase of 17% compared to October 2011.   Year-to-date sales are 5,895; 10% over the first nine months of 2011.

Dollar volume for October was up 39% to $132Mil. For the year we are at $1.177Billion!

New homes sold in October increased 91% over new homes sold in September of 2011!!…and are up 67% YTD.

Historically, October sales decrease by 7% from September. October 2012 sales increased by 12% from September 2012.

Of our total sales in October… 24% were distressed (151 total sales)….up 3% from September 2012. In October 2011, 45% of our sales were distressed.  In January 56% of distressed properties were REOs and 44% were short sales.  In September the ratio was 71% short sales (79 total sales) and 29% REOs (32 total sales). In October something interesting happened…Short sales fell from 71% to 58% (87 total sales) of total distressed transactions while REO’s increased from 29% to 42% (64 total sales) overall. Although not a large raw number, it represents an increase of REO activity and is something to watch. This is eight consecutive months with short sales being the larger percentage of distressed properties sold.

Pending sales at the end of October were 992; down 11% from September. In general pending sales in May are the highest of the year; and June the second highest.  The percentage of pending sales in distress decreased 1% from September, totaling 27% overall. There has been very little fluctuation in this number since May 2012 when we first went below 30%. A year ago we were averaging close to 50% of pendings in distress; but have decreased steadily since January.  Of Pending sales in distress, short sales outnumbered REO’s 2.7 to 1.

At the end of October, we had 22% more sales pending than at the end of October 2011.

October median home price was $178,000; up 19% from October 2011. Median home price is up 29% since January of this year and above $170,000 for six months running.  We continue to outpace our national recovery; according to NAR’s most recent report.

New Homes median price for October was $241,979; up 16% from October 2011.

The number of houses available at the end of October decreased 7% from September. At the end of October our total active inventory was 1,962 homes. This is 14% less than last year at this time.

At the same time, the percentage of distressed active listings increased 1% to 24%. This is the second lowest number we’ve seen in several years. We have been hovering between 33% and 36% for the last year. We remain well below the 40% levels set last spring….when we were on the increase.

With an inventory increasing and the percentage of distressed inventory decreasing; median home price will continue to strengthen.

Of our Distressed Inventory 90% is Short Sales (392 homes) and only 10% is REO (47 homes); nearly unchanged from last month.

Available inventory declined in all price points.

In Ada County we now have less than 3.3 months of inventory on hand.

The price category in shortest supply is < $159,999 where we have 2.3 months. All price points up to $400,000 have less than 4 month’s supply. We have benefited for nearly two years from inventory levels much lower than national average.

Multiple offers are much more prevalent; now becoming the norm.

Based on October sold data, our most desirable price point is $120,000 to $160,000 which was 23% of total sales. The next largest price point sold is $160,000 to $200,000 at 15.4% of all sales.