I enjoy analyzing the market stats from the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors (NEFAR) each month and I continue to be optimistic about the real estate market, but I wanted to share 3 facts that may surprise you.
First, we are having a great sales month at Davidson Realty and pending sales are up dramatically at NEFAR from 1,244 pending sales in January to 1,627 in February, which leads to the first surprise. I always believed that pending sales would close. It is logical but it isn’t true. I can’t tell you how many homes we have sold multiple times!
The second surprise is that even though our inventory levels are steadily improving and we have an 11 month supply of homes, condos and townhouses available in all price ranges, amazingly there is a 70 month supply of single family homes listed at $1,000,000 plus. I am not sure with the passage of the Health Care Bill that any of us will live long enough to see these homes get sold.
The third fact isn’t a surprise, but lender mediated closings were 49.7% of all closings in February, 2010 down from 50.1% in January.
The closings in our market have improved over last year and I will share those numbers below.
September 2009 closings 1,364 September 2008 1,151
October 2009 1,379 October 2008 1,025
November 2009 1,184 November 2008 795
December 2009 1,378 December 2008 1,123
January 2010 897 January 2009 701
February 2010 935 February 2009 873
March 2010 ? March 2009 1,063
As you can see, the closings at the end of 2009 were better than the previous year. When I looked at January and February 2010 closings, it was comforting to see a similar drop last year. The big question is what the next few months will bring in the way of closings. That is the main statistic I am watching since as I shared above sales are great, but they don’t always make it to closing.
The median and average sales price this month continues to show signs of stability. There was a slight dip in pricing in January and a slight increase in February.
If you are interested in receiving our electronic Davidson News twice a month which includes our Best Buy List voted on by our agents, please send me an email at sdavidson@davidsonrealtyinc.com.
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