By The Numbers..
From time to time, we think it’s important to take a snapshot of the market information for Caroline and Spotsylvania. It helps us to gauge how to best advise our clients on the next steps in making an offer or selling their homes. Everyone seems to be talking about how the market isn’t very healthy, but let’s put this in a one year perspective. The numbers below show that the two aforementioned markets are pretty much the same over the past year. That’s good considering the declining marketing over the two years prior. Stability we can work with, even it’s stabilizing at the bottom.
All Markets are Local
We’re doing a comparison on two counties here, but it’s important to point out that all markets are different. We can’t use marketing fluctuation from say, Detroit as the economic and political environment is far more volatile than this area of Virginia. There are several contributing factors to market we’re in now. We’re all hoping that these factors will steadily improve over time.
There are a few exceptions. When governmental policies change they can affect all markets. Right now the Fed has stopped buying mortgage backed securities and typical understanding is that there is a significant chance that interest rates (the cost of buying money) will rise for the purchasers are lenders will need to charge more with less active mortgages. This rise in interest rate may slow down the buyers getting mortgages. For now, I want to take a look at the past twelve months as virtually no one can tell us what the next 12 will look like.
Median Price for Under Contract, Sold and For Sale Homes
Over the past twelve months we’ve seen a pretty constant level of the price people are asking for when they put their home on the market (red), a slightly lower price for what is sold (green) and even lower price for the offer price of those homes under contract (blue).
Caroline County, Virginia
Spotsylvania County, Virginia
Percentage of Active Home Listings Under Contract
Our next charts are those that show the consistency of percentage of homes under contract compared to the number listed. In May of 2009 there were 11% of active residential listings under contract and currently there are 8.3. A height of 13% were under contract in May and April for Caroline County.
For Spotsylvania there were 16% in May of 2009 and 17% in May of 2010.
The April and May months of 2010 were given bumps because of the Federal Home Buyer Tax Credit.
Caroline, Virginia
Spotsylvania, Virginia
Residential Real Estate Inventory
Here’s where it hurts a bit if you’re trying to sell your home. The bars in red represent the number of homes listed in MLS for sale. The numbers in blue shows how many went under contract that month and the numbers in green show the number of homes that actually sold. In some cases you might ask why the number of homes in blue (representing those under contract) are higher than those in green (representing what actually was sold to the buyer). There are two brief answers. First because a large number of contracts on are Short Sales there are a percentage that simply don’t get sold. The second reason is that things written in one month may take a few months to close. Things, in blue in May, may not turn green until July.
Caroline, Virginia
Spotsylvania, Virginia
Foreclosures Galore!
Our last charts are new to my list of market stats and that is the percentage of active homes for sale that are actually owned by the bank, also known as REO or Real Estate Owned properties. This does not include Short Sales. In both markets roughly 30% of active listings are Bank owned properties. It’s estimated that an additional 25% are short sales making a little over half of all homes for sales some type of distressed property. This is good for buyers and not so great for sellers.
Caroline, Virginia
Spotsylvania, Virginia
