Highland Lakes Market Report
Wow, it’s already September and this year is flying by. You know what that means, college football and cooler weather. Well, you can scratch the cooler weather part but we call still get excited about college football, right?
I recently had the opportunity to appraise in the Highland Lakes subdivision in Shelby County. This is an upscale lakefront neighborhood located in the northern part of the county.
What makes Highland Lakes popular is the variety of homes, with some being on interior lots and others being either situated on a lake or ridge lot. As you can imagine this provides a wide range of selling prices.
The neighborhood has been around for nearly 25 years and continues to be a popular choice for home buyers. The neighborhood amenities include parks, lakes, and other green areas.
Here is a breakdown of the current active listings and also the sale information from August 2018 compared to 2019:
North Shelby County Sales Stats
As I noted previously, Highland Lakes is located in North Shelby County. I’ve also included some sales charts from the overall MLS Area 260 to compare the two.
As you can see from the charts the last quarter of the year goes through typical market fluctuations. Sales and active listings tend to drop off from the peak months of May, June, and July.
The days on the market for the last quarter of the year shows a downward trend, no doubt caused by more limited inventory and less of a choice for buyers. When there are fewer houses for sale buyers tend to snatch up the available inventory quicker than when there are more choices.
Over the past 3 years, there has been a steady but positive trend in median sales prices for homes in the North Shelby County area.
Key Takeaways When Selling Your Home In The Fall
Here are the key takeaways when selling your home during this time of year:
- While inventory is lower and there are fewer choices buyers are still savvy enough to know when a home is overpriced. If you price your home accurately you can find a buyer much sooner than other times of the year due to less competition.
- If priced accurately you can most likely sell your home in under 60 days. If you price it too high it could go beyond this and it could hurt your chances of selling your home for top dollar.
- Overpricing your home, in the beginning, can result in it staying on the market longer than normal. When you realize this and lower the price it can signal to the market that something is wrong with the house.
This can cause a downward trend of price reductions that may result in a final sale price lower than you would have gotten if you had set the price at a lower amount than your original price.
Conclusion
While sales tend to trail off at the end of the year there is an opportunity for sellers to market their home at a time when there is limited inventory. This can contribute to selling your home quicker and for top dollar.
Accurately pricing your home is critical. You can do this with the help of a pre-listing appraisal. Call me if yo have any questions.
Questions?
Do you have any questions about the Highland Lakes neighborhood? Please leave a comment below and I will do my best to answer. As always, thanks for reading.
I really like your visuals Tom. Nice job!! It looks like the market had maybe a more definitive dull season last year when mortgage rates spiked. It seems like some of your graphs are higher than average for that time (but not crazy high).
Good eye, Ryan. Overall the Birmingham real estate market does not have high or low extremes. We are a fairly stable market. While we did experience detrimental side effects from the crash in 2007 it was not as extreme as some areas. Thanks for sharing your insight.