These are PRELIMINARY stats on “How’s the market?”
It looks like the number of homes sold in Feb ’10 was about the same as Feb ’09. We saw +9% Jan ’10 vs. Jan ’09 for number of units sold. This will look better in a few days, as the Metrolist stats take some time to compile.
Note: The number of sales is steady or increasing in Denver, not declining as it is in much of the US.
Looking at average price, we improved +11% from Feb ’09 to Feb ’10. The average home price was $265K. We saw +9% price increase from Jan ’09 to Jan ’10. This mainly a function that there essentially no inventory of small homes to sell. Since we’re only selling Cadillacs (we’re out of Chevy’s), the average price is going up.
Note: The average price of a home sold in Denver has been increasing in the last year. However, this is a bit misleading. When we saw double-digit declines of home prices a few years ago, that was due to selling many small, nasty REO homes. Nicer homes were not selling. That change in mix drove most of the price decline. We’re now seeing the opposite effect.
DOM (Days on Market) declined in Feb ’09 vs. Feb ’10, from 104 to 92 days. We had a similar pattern in January. A decline in DOM usually foreshadows a market recovery. This is great news for the long term health of our market. |
