Wednesday, June 15, 2011

May continues Ada County real estate market recovery...

May sales were 595 in Ada County, a decrease of 4.9% compared to May 2010.

Historically May sales increase somewhere between 2% and 28% (2006).  May 2011 had 11% more sales than April 2011.

Year-to-date 2011 sales are within 3% of YTD 2010.

Of our total sales in May… 53% were distressed….down 3% from April 2011. (Short sales 16% and REO’s 37%). Distressed sales continue to dominate the market...but have show modest decreases each month in 2011.

Pending sales at the end of May were 1002; and increase of 5% from the end of April. This is five consecutive monthly increases. The percentage of pending sales in distress decreased 5% from April 2011 totaling 43% overall.  This is our third consecutive month’s decrease. We are now at two consecutive months below 50%.

Last month I wrote that “pending sales at the end of May would be a true “test of our recovery”.  Based on that, we are continuing to move forward.

The number of houses available for sale at the end of May was 2,629; unchanged from April and 30% less than last year at this time. Currently available inventory compares to February 2006.

At the same time, the percentage of active inventory that is distressed dropped almost 1% from April to 36%.  This is the third consecutive monthly decline and keeps us 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 <$100,000 with 2.4 months available. This is closely followed by the $100,000 to $120,000 with 2.6 months and $120,000 to $159,000 with 4.3 months. 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 second month in a row to 12.

May median home price jumped $11,000 to $144,000; down 7% from May 2010.

New Homes median price for April 2011 was $223,500, an increase of almost 40% from April 2010.

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

We still have a long way to go…but at least we are farther down the path and making progress every day.  Coming out of this market is like climbing Mt. Borah; its steep and taxing, but as long as we keep doing the right things and putting one foot in front of the other, it’s doable.

There continue to be “squalls” around us threatening bad weather at any minute.

We’ve had six weeks of Wall Street declines; private employment is not generating the number of jobs we need and gasoline costs, although less than a month ago are nearly a dollar more than a year ago.

Courtesy of Marc Lebowitz,  Ada Association of Realtors

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