If you’ve been tracking the list-to-sold and inventory charts and tables you are very aware that inventory trends have been moving down for a long time. Even so, prices continued to decline, albeit at a slowing pace. Even so, it seemed that if this trend continued, surely price firming and possibly price increases were on the horizon, right?
It’s finally beginning to look that way as price direction is looking pretty flat which is a vast improvement over the cliff-like looking trends of the past. In fact when measuring price in sq ft we had a slight uptick 2011 over 2010 and 3 quarters of appreciation in 2011. Comparatively speaking, January is off to a strong start and we only have 10 months to go before we really know how 2012 performs J
Variation is taming down but is still too high and lots of uncertainty still persists locally, nationally and globally but we certainly have a long track record of improvement behind us.
Quick Summary:
Chart 1 The monthly sales chart is choppy as ever reminding us why taking serious month over month results is frivolous but a few important developments are right in front of us. 1. Compare this Januarys values to those in 2010 and 2011 and you will see a big difference. 2. Take a look at the trend from 01/2010 to today.
Chart 2 Quarterly home price values in $/sq. ft. If you believe one quarter performs better or worse than any other, this is the chart to look at to find out.
Chart 3 Number of sales rose steeply from 2008 to 2009 and rising slowly from 2009 through 2011. It’s nice to see some stabilization. Hopefully it will last.
Chart 4 Number of sales by quarter. If you believe more sales occur in one quarter than another, this is the chart to view to find out.
Chart 5 After a big rise in home size we are now witnessing a big fall. This is one reason why I am now reporting home values in price per sq ft, instead of just average sale price.
Chart 6 This is the appreciation chart. As you can see we actually had positive appreciation from 2010 to 2011. 2012 is down a bit but it is early in the year and performing better than the past 2 Januaries.
Chart 7 Home values in price per sq ft have been nearly flat for three years. That’s a huge contrast to the three years previous to this trend!
In a nutshell, we have lots of positive trends behind us, some of which such as list to sold and inventory trends indicate we should see some definite price firming; assuming of course demand remains constant or grows. The $64,000.00 question though is our local and national economy. I have lots of thoughts about that, but will stick to what I know most about; local Real Estate J
http://www.centralorproperty.com/Central,ORTrends.html
Also now on: http://centralorhomesales.com/price-trends.asp
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