Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Up? Down? Sideways? Who Knows?

It's the middle of May. We are solidly in the second quarter of the year, and I'm looking at housing numbers for the month of April to make some sense of what's happening in my near west side neighborhood. There are forecasters and prognosticators who estimate and predict to try to determine where the market is going.  Many of these "experts" tell us the doom and gloom story of the real estate market. I'm not saying they are wrong. What I will say is I'm not seeing it. Where I live, houses are moving, and quickly (see my previous post about a home in Westmorland that had 10 offers).

In Sunset Village for instance, there was only one sale during April, but there are currently 12 houses on the market.  Five of those 12 have an accepted offer or are pending (all contingencies have been removed, just waiting to close).  In Westmorland, the picture is much the same.  Two properties closed in April, but there are only six homes for sale in that area and two of them have an accepted offer.

The Dudgeon-Monroe neighborhood offers a little different story.  Houses in this neighborhood typically have a little higher price tag.  Three houses in Dudgeon-Monroe sold in April, but there are 31 homes on the market in that neighborhood.  Seven of those 31 have an accepted offer.  To be fair, several of these 31 homes have just been listed in the last week or so.

My theory was that houses in the $250,000-$300,000 price range were the properties that were selling. And some of those had accepted offers within a matter of days. I have done a little more research and guess what?  My theory has been blown out of the water! There are a couple of homes in Sunset Village that are lovely homes, but they are priced higher ($375,000-$390,000) than most of the homes in the area. My narrow mindedness thought these homes would probably not sell very quickly. Lo and behold, they both have accepted offers. One of these homes has been on the market for less than 3 weeks!

So what's my point?  Is the market up? Down? Sideways?   Who knows?  I do know, it's not doom and gloom out there, as the forecasters would have us believe. It's also not all rosy and sunshine either. It is what it is, and buyers are making decisions based on sound advice and counsel. 

So maybe it's not about up, down or sideways, but rather about just moving forward.  Until next time...

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