Yeah, I know … stats are boring. Especially putting them together every month.
But when helping a seller understand what they need to do to sell their house … or why they’ll likely get the price under discussion, or why a buyer could/should pay a particular price for a home, they’re invaluable.
So here’s boring, but invaluable statistic #1: The average home price for homes that sold as of end of July 2010 is less than it was in July 2004:
So here’s boring, but invaluable statistic #2: There’s typically a spike in accepted offers in March, followed by steady acceptable offers throughout the summer. Except look what happened in April this year — Remember that to qualify for one of the homebuyer tax credits that contracts had to be in place by April 30th:
Boring but invaluable statistic #3: To back up the previous graph, one would expect that a great number of closed sales would have occurred between April and end of September. Before extension, the home buyer tax credit required that sales must close by end of June (that closing date requirement was extended to end of September–we’ll watch for that later in a couple of months). Let’s see what’s happening so far as compared to previous years. There’s that expected spike in June; more homes closed in June of 2010 than in either 2008 or in 2009! Not dramatically, but then again, Auburn is a small town!
So … you want to sell your house, but don’t necessarily want to muck it out first or make basic showing improvements recommended by me … your faithful and knowledgeable Realtor(c). Who controls whether your house will sell? You? Or the Buyer?
Here’s Boring but invaluable statistic #4 — The buyer definitely controls! Based on the rate of home sales in July compared to the number of houses currently on the market, it’ll take almost 13 months to sell everything on the market. Want to wait 13 months to sell your house? Probably not. make your house the BEST house on the market for the best price. It’ll sell sooner!
Hard numbers are essential when keeping track of what’s really going on in your area. For help in evaluating your home selling or home buying options, give me a call. And expect some charts and graphs — they show the picture clearly!
[…] the last few days, I’ve blogged a bit about market updates: Boring but Invaluable Statistics for Auburn and Tedious but Crucial Statistics for Maple Valley, Washington. After yesterday’s Maple […]