Recent sales data for the month of October provided by the Birmingham Multiple Listing Service indicates some positive trends in residential home sale prices. Some of the good news includes an increase in the median sales price over this time last year (2009). In October of this year the median sales price was $256,150 compared to $239,035 for last year, for an increase of 7.2%. The chart below shows more statistics for October of 2010.
This of course includes all homes in the Hoover area. Some areas may be higher and others lower. Real estate is location specific so this is no indication that all homes will show this type of increase, but as a whole it is positive. Other indicators include new listings, which has decreased from last year. This could reflect owners willingness to stay in their existing homes until the market recovers. The overall number of new listings in the past 12 months has exceeded last year by 6.4%. An extension of this statistic would be closed sales, which has also decreased over 2009. The list price to sales price ratio is slightly higher at 93.6% this year, compared to 93% last year. Any increase in this statistic is good because it measures how much the buyer had to come off of their full list price. The average days on market that it takes to sell a home has decreased from 133 days to 72 days, which is a good indicator as well since everyone wants to sell their home as quickly as possible. This is only a brief synopsis of recent sales activity in the Hoover, Alabama area. Are you seeing this type of activity in your market? If not, what is the market like?
Interesting, Tom. Nice to see that this particular area is doing better than other parts of the country.
Not all areas in Birmingham are like this but overall we have not seen as drastic declines as some parts of the country have.