Charlotte County Home Sales

June 28th, 2007

If you are like many wondering just what is selling, the following is a breakdown of homes sales, year to date, by price category.  This is for the period from January 1st through May 31, 2007, and represents residential sales for the entire county.
 

Homes priced from:
$300,000 and under                1200 sold                    80% of total                          
$301-500,000                            206                            14%
$501-700,000                              62                              4%
$701-900,000                              10                              1%
$901,000 and above                   14                              1%
 

A total of 1,492 homes were sold in the entire county in the past 5 months.  The median price (the number most quoted in statistics) was $195,000.  The average price of a home was $232,000.  For many, these two figures are confusing so simply stated, the difference between the median and the average price is, the median price is the point where half the sales are below, and half the sales are above that price.  The average price of course is derived by dividing the total number of sales into the total sales dollars.
 

Susan Herrera of CNN, recently interviewed Dr. Edward Learner of UCLA’s School of Management, where he commented on the current state of the real estate market and how he feels the return to “normalcy” is going to take a couple of years.  He further stated, “Sellers need to clear inventory and cut price.”  Perhaps the weight of his words for aggressive pricing was more succinctly put when we went on to say, “Buyers should view a house like a bus; if you miss one, a better one will come along in an hour or two.”

 

Susan Wachter, Professor of Real Estate and Finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business was also interviewed and commented that the real estate market was still in decline.  She feels the market will bottom closer to the end of the year however, she did stress that prices need to continue to go down as they are still too high.

 

Other analysts have drawn the correlation, “as interest rates go higher, historically home prices are lowered.”
 

As a seller, this information should confirm what we keep saying, by aggressively pricing your house now you may save yourself thousands in the long run, as you won’t be chasing a “declining” market.  We have seen that today’s buyer is no longer responding to “fair market prices” or “competitive market prices,” they want a deal.  They feel the market is still adjusting and the only way they are getting off the fence is if they feel by negotiating well enough today, they would still be in good shape tomorrow if the market continues to decline as expected.

 

You have to ask yourself, “Am I competitively priced or am I the DEAL?”  The result of your property selling may be more in line with how you answered the question! 

 

Few can contest that our area is everything Money Magazine and Forbes suggested in voting us as “One of the top places to live in the country.”  The adjustment in real estate prices was expected, and needed, to return ourselves to a healthy balance. The faster we achieve this balance, the quicker we are going to realize the potential the media and developers alike have predicted for our area for years to come.

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