Sunday, July 29, 2012

Tallahassee Home Sales

I read an article in the local fish wrapper yesterday morning. It had to do with the fact that home sales were up 18% points. Now I appreciate the attempt at painting the home market in some sort of positive light. The fact is that it is just hard to find any encouraging news concerning the sale of homes in this current market. We are in the worst real estate market since the Great Depression.

If you like graphs and reports that will make your head spin take a look at the following. This is put together by our Tallahassee Board of Realtors and Timberlane Appraisers. You may have to copy and paste it in your browser.

http://www.tbrnet.org/uploads/file/Snapshot/2012cumulativeJan-Jun.pdf

The take away from this statistical monstrosity is this. We had the worst year on record in Leon County 2010 to 2011. Year to date sales of detached homes was 1645 through June 2011. We look at year to date sales of detached homes through June 2012 we see that we sold 1756 detached homes. That is an increase of 7% anyway you want to slice it.

Now we have a tepid increase in sales based on the worst year on record. That is hardly news that should start us dancing in the streets. The attempt to paint a strong positive trend on that news is sort of like putting the lipstick on the proverbial pig. It is still a pig.

A much higher % of distressed sales marks our current path. We are moving more and more properties onto the lis pendens list at the courthouse. Therefore we can predict that trend is going to continue.

The bad news is that house values continue to be driven down by the mix-in of the financially impaired sales. Note current trend past six months average selling price of detached homes is $199,400 as compared to the earlier one year trend with value at $201,100.

When my friends call me about putting their homes on the market I tell them the same thing. If there is any way that you can stay in it, please do so. Try to wait it out. If you simply have to sell then price it lean and mean. Also, make sure you take the professional realtor with you.