Thursday, March 08, 2007

February Sales Report (2007)

Well... more of the same this month. The market continues to collect inventory at a fast pace and successful sales crawl slowly along. I have the same charts this month that I normally do but I'm going to add some more data towards the end (not in chart format). I'm finally getting the hang of our new MLS program (oops, I mean Data Exchange program) to be able to find more reliable data to share. As always, the disclaimer...

Disclaimer... all data compiled for this report comes from the WARDEX Data Exchange and does not include any sales activity from outside that resource. All research is done only on single family homes and there is no inclusion of modular homes, commercial properties, or vacant land. The geographical area researched includes; all areas within the boundaries of the city of Kingman, north Kingman, the Hualapai Mountain area, and the Valle Vista subdivisions. Click here to see maps of the included area's.

The good news for February is that we outproduced January even with three less days in the month, however it wasn't a total thrashing of the previous month.

60 more new listings than successfully closed sales is the first thing that pops out when I look at this. Yes, better than the ratio in January but this gap needs to begin to close on a consistent basis. By my guess there is at least 14 months worth of inventory in the areas I include for data research, that's 14 months worth of waiting in line to perhaps sell your home... and you only want a 90 day listing contract Mr. and Mrs. Seller??

Nice to see the red line bounce back a little, but it would be even nicer to see the blue line head south for awhile. Looking at the new listings there were seven new listings that hit the market for more than $400,000 so I know that helped move the blue line somewhat higher. I'll have more on the success of sales for homes in this price range later on. As far as the red line goes I believe we will see it jump up and down between $190,000 and $210,000 for the rest of this year.

Below you will see the charts for the data for the last three plus years, the orange represents the 2007 year. It's an ugly orange which is fine, because that is the way this year is likely to end up... ugly.




In February there was one closing that had a $445,000 price tag, this marked the first time since August of 2006 that a home sold for this amount and only two others even sold for $400,000 or more in that time frame. I believe we will see a home close escrow for more than $500,000 in the next month or two as one listing is under contract right now that had a listing price of $549,000. So maybe things are picking up again in the high priced market. Stay tuned.

With our new Data Exchange (think MLS) service we now have the ability to view the original list price when a listing was first brought to market and we have the currently listed price, which are two different items. Our old MLS would not allow me to search for the original listed price as it only showed me the current listed price (even though on the listing itself I could see the original listed price... confused?? So am I just bare with me). Basically I have three columns of price for listings.

When I compare last months numbers I see that the current listed price was conceded an average of $10,190 to the final sales price. However when I compare the original listed price to the final sales price, the average price concession was $23,752.

Now as I explained in my listings report for February, we now have a 'cumulative days on market' data figure.

Also to note the average days on market for these 'new' listings in February is 44 days. 44 days?? But isn't there only 28 days in February?? Why yes darling, you are correct. The reason for the higher number is that our days on market figure includes any properties that were re-listed again either by the same broker or another new broker that adds to the total amount of days on the market. This is referred to as cumulative days on market or CDOM.


Now looking at the CDOM for the sold listings for February the average number of cumulative days is 250. Again, that is the average number. Keep in mind that some of these sold listings were re-listed by either the same broker or a different broker... but the clock kept ticking. This information along with the original list price data concession to the successful close of escrow sales number tells me that along with sellers, local Realtors were not reading the market correctly throughout much of last year (all too willing to just get the listing... and I was guilty of this to an extent as well) .

Here are some CDOM number that might blow you away... 298, 465, 623, 786, and 1226 total days to close escrow. I even left out some within that range. I realize that it is possible that some of these sold listings could have been lease option purchases that finally closed as I know this how the listings work through the system, and honestly I didn't delve that deep into the data (who has the time??).

On the other side of the coin, five listings of the 42 that sold in February spent less than 30 days on the market.

I think those numbers are interesting and I plan on revealing this kind of data in the future.

The average home that successfully closed escrow and sold in February had; 2.88 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a 1.83 car garage, with 1541 square feet of living space (@ $130 a square foot), and was built in 1994.

Lastly, 1.5 homes closed escrow per day in February which was up from 1.29 a day in January. Based on this run rate I am going to predict that in March 48 homes will sell. If you are a seller currently, will yours be one of those 48?? Now that you have all the facts and figures to play with you certainly can be one of those 48. The prevailing question will be, is your home priced right??

Have a great month!!

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