Local market conditions
Let’s take a look around the nation at the latest facts and figures, provided by the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.
In the past few months there has been a great surge in buyer activity. And, October was no different.
Looking on a national level lets delve into regional sales by price:
In the Northeast, the biggest home sales by price class this year is still for homes in the $100,000 to $250,000 range. Compared to October of last year, properties sold in that price range increased by nearly 33%, and that’s way up even from the numbers of the excellent summer market, so we’re really seeing a superb autumn market in this region. For properties in the $250,000 to $500,000 there’s been a rise of 18% over last year. In fact, it’s only in the $750,000 to 1-million range that we’ve seen any decline and that was only by 3%.
In the Midwest, there’s been great gains in the under $250,000 market. Over half the increases In October 2009 were in this category, with 41% of them in the $100,000 to $250,000 mark. This could certainly be a sign of first time buyers and qualified renters entering into the market to snap up some of the bargains that have been floating around.
In the South during the previous months, the hot money has been on properties priced below $100,000 but we’ve seeing a big increase in sales priced up to $250,000 from October of last year. In fact, properties priced below $100,000 and from $100,000 to $250,000 both showed a jump of 25% from October 2008.
Out West the market is still very busy — nothing like the astounding 100% plus rises we saw over the summer — but a much more even spread across price brackets, with prices from up to $100,000 and from $100,000 to $250,000 both showing over 20% rises from last October. The middle range of $250,000 to $500,000 is the only place where we saw a slight falling off, just over 4% down from last year, but then everything after that has seen a noticeable rise so it could be that the luxury end of the market is also finally seeing some resurgence.
So even though we’re well into autumn and heading full steam for the winter market, Octobers figures have proved to be hot, hot, hot with more selling in more price brackets. It should be interesting to see how the expanded tax credit affects the market in the coming months as repeat buyers enter the field.
