The recently published real estate market statistics for December 2011 are quite enlightening and show some real signs of positive traction looking into the future. Perhaps the most interesting of all the stats is that there were only 4,911 Active Listings at the end of the month. With sales hovering around 1,000 homes per month recently that puts our inventory at ONLY a 5 month supply. Typically anything under a 6 month inventory is thought of as a seller’s market.
The average sales price increased slightly from the previous month nudging up by 1.92%. These values still remain well below a year ago, but any positive movement is encouraging and with the inventory shrinking by almost 30% from a year ago it’s quite likely we could see some upward pressure on prices. The general economy’s ongoing recover, albeit slow, will continue to encourage buyers back into the market. Another good statistic is the sales price of homes in relation to the listed price. The average sale price to list price ratio was 94.42%, which means there isn’t a whole lot of discounting happening during negotiations of the desirable properties which are selling.
Is the bottom finally here? It’s very likely but not assured. However, even if this isn’t the absolute bottom it seems very unlikely that anyone making a purchase today will get hurt too much on price if they intend to hold the property for a number of years, particularly with the near record low interest rates. Most of the “experts” are forecasting 2012 as a year that the hardest hit areas will begin to rebound and the December statistics seem to indicate that might well be the case.
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