The Long Hot Summer is Upon Us…and Houses Continue to Sell

Posted on July 13, 2010. Filed under: Market Update |

I was talking to some REALTOR® friends at Alive After 5 last week. I asked them… “If you are working 10 deals today…how many of them do you expect to close?” Their collective answer was… “3 to 5”. What a world… you work as hard as you possibly can, and then hope like heck the deal closes (and most of the time it won’t) and that you will get paid.

Anyway…

June numbers are in, and in spite of the dire warnings that the end of the tax credit would be the end of our housing recovery, it looks like we are continuing to creep along.

June sales in Ada County were 654. That’s an increase over June ’09 of 11.3%. Year-To-Date ’10 is now 3,132; an increase of 36% over the first half of 2009. Historically, June sales are roughly equal to May. True to form, June ’10 was 2% higher than May ’10.

Of our total sales in June…44% were distressed….a slight improvement as compared to May…but certainly not worse.

Pending sales fell sharply in June as the tax credit expired. Pending sales in April were 1,162; May 806 and June 650.

We can, at lease be thankful that our efforts to convince Congress to extend the deadline for closing deals (to qualify for the tax credit) succeeded…its too bad it had to come so late that it caused more stress in a too stressed market.

The percentage of pending sales in distress is inched up 2% over May to 50% overall. That’s down from our high in March, but still too high. One bright note, default filings are down in June.

Inventory increased by nearly 100 houses from last month to this. At the same time, the percentage of active inventory that is distressed, decreased by .5% to 46.3% at month’s end. That’s suggests that more “traditional” sellers are entering the market at the beginning of our selling season. Recent reports in the Statesman also point to an increase in building permits and housing starts. Dramatically lower land prices are enabling some builders to come back into the market and price their product competitively to the current short sale inventory.
Median home price jumped up $7,400 to $162,400 from May. Year-to-date ’10 our median is $155,900 (Existing – -$154,900 and New $162,400). For buyers, the better indicator might be Average Price. In May our average Price for a home in Ada County was $180,807. In April the Average Price was $177,197. April ’10 was our lowest median price of the year… $151,577…so far.

Final thought…remember a few months ago when the “pundits” were forecasting big increases in mortgage rates when the Feds stopped buying mortgage backed securities? Today 30 yr fixed rates can be had for 4.3%…the lowest in 50 years.

Maybe now really is the time to buy…which, by extension, makes it as good a time to sell.

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