By Marc Lebowitz, RCE, CAE
Executive Director, Ada County Association of REALTORS®
Single family home sales in August 2013 were 812 in Ada County, an increase of 12% compared to August 2012. Four months in a row above 800!!! We sure haven’t seen that in a while. Actually you have to go back to the summer of ’06.
Year-to-date sales are 5,490; up 17% over 2012 YTD sales of 4,696. NAR data says that for every home sold, $60,000 is added to the local economy. Based on our sales volume, we have added $329 Million to our local economy so far this year.
Dollar volume for August was up 28% to $193 million and YTD we are just over $1.2 billion in sales.
Days on market averaged 46 in August, two days more than last month. For the first six months the average was 52 DOM.
New homes sold in August totaled 152, one more than the total new homes sold in August 2012.
Historically, August sales increase 2% over July, but August 2013 sales decreased 8% compared to July 2013.
Of the total sales in August, 11% were distressed; no change from last month. In August 2012, 21% of sales were distressed. In August 2013 45% of distressed properties were REOs (40) and 55% were short sales (49).
In August 2012 we experienced significant improvement in the health of distressed property sales – only 21% compared to 44% in 2011. We are now seeing distressed properties reduced by almost half again.
Pending sales at the end of August were 1,071; down 14% from July 2013.
Of Pending sales in distress (12%), short sales outnumbered REO’s 2 to 1.
At the end of August, we had 4% fewer sales pending than at the end of August 2012. This is the first time this year we’ve seen a decline in pendings relative to the previous year. This is a key number to monitor moving forward.
August median home price was $201,992; up 12% from August 2012. For the first time since 2008, the medium home price has been over $200,000 for three consecutive months. According to
NAR’s most recent report; national median price is $213,500. We continue to outpace the national housing recovery.
New Homes median price for August was $283,004; up 26% from August 2012. For Existing homes the increase is 12%.
The number of houses available for sale at the end of August increased 4% from July 2013 to 2,456. This is 14% more than last year at this time. Since January we have increased the number of single family homes for sale by 48%, allowing us to grow our YTD sales increase.
Of the total active listings, 12% are distressed, down 2% from July.
With inventory increasing and the percentage of distressed inventory decreasing, median home price will continue to strengthen well into the third quarter.
Of our Distressed Inventory, 73% is Short Sales (207) and 27% is REO (76).
Available inventory increased at all price points except in the <$120K range; which decreased by 14%. The price range adding the most homes to the market is $160,000 to $250,000, with an increase of 30 homes.
In Ada County we now have 2.9 months of inventory on hand, up a little from the end of July.
The price category in shortest supply is <$120K where we have 1.7 months. All price points up to $500,000 have a <4 month’s supply.
We’ve left behind the Summer of ’13 and its highest sales and median prices of the year. The question now is, as it was to Newton (“Laws of Motion”), how far into the future the momentum will carry us.
Based on year-to-date performance, it’s likely we will finish the year with more than 8,000 total homes sold, which would represent an 11% increase is sales year over year.
Median home prices will likely stabilize in the $195K to $200K price range for the fourth quarter.
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