September 2011 Market Update

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The biggest news in the Bay County Real Estate was the introduction of a new MLS system, which has been greeted with weeping and gnashing of teeth.  There seems to be almost universal dislike of the new system among Realtors.  And as I attempted to compile my numbers for this Market Update, I began to think that I didn’t like it very much, either.  It doesn’t seem to compile and present data quite as simply as the old system, so I am a little suspect of some of the numbers I am seeing.  On the other hand, the new system has some cool reports, and I will start including some of that data in my monthly reports.

September saw 124 single family house sales, down a little bit from August’s 132.  The average selling price was $174,938 (I prefer to report median sales price, not average, but I have yet to figure out how to get the median number out of the new system…this 175K number sounds high to me).  The average “dollar per square foot” figure was $96, and we have 1294 single family houses on the market, which translates to 10.4 months worth of inventory…still trending down, which is good.  The “hot spot” in the market is between $80,000 and $180,000…57 of the 124 sales were in that range.

I noticed an interesting trend this month.  We had 230 new listings in September, with only 124 sales.  The new listing’s average price was $222,000, while the average price of the houses that sold was $175,000.  That indicates that houses are coming on the market almost twice as fast as they are selling, and they are being listed at a price well above the “sweet spot” in the market.  That sounds like a recipe for increasing inventory to me.

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