Monthly Sales Stats for Greensboro. Can It Actually Be? Some Good News??

OMG OMG OMG.

I pulled sales stats for the month of December and saw - dare I write it down? - some truly, for real, not for nothing, GOOD NEWS.

First, it looked as one would expect. That is, when comparing December 2008 with December 2007, the number of sales is down. But the number of sales compared with November are UP.

So far, not all that hard to predict and not glowingly upbeat:

But then, there are the figures about the average closed prices for the same time periods. Here things get more interesting.

The average closed price for the month of December 2008 was higher…yes, higher…than the average closed price in December 2007.

“Huh? What’s that, you say”, you might rightly ask. Well, here it is:

In case you missed that last point:

The average price was only $477 higher, but, hey, this the great real estate meltdown of 2008. Any improvement is an improvement. And this was the only month of the year where the average closed price was higher than the corresponding month of 2007.

And for the cherry on the Optimist’s Cake, the average days on market for properties that closed in December was lower than for December 2007.

Wow. This is all GOOD NEWS.

Now, I’m not one to pull only the good data and ignore the bad. Never wanted to be a cheerleader for the sake of cheering.

“Blunt as a spoon” is the way some have described me, with no compliment intended.

But this is better than expected.

Yes, there were fewer properties that closed. But can it be that we are nearing the bottom in regards to price decreases? Have we found the limits of sellers’ tolerance for pressure?

If so, then it is only a matter of time until buyers will find that the idea of  ‘waiting another month or so and the prices will be even lower’ is not going to serve them well. And then is when we may seem some real changes in the real estate market.

As oft repeated on this blog, Greensboro isn’t southern California or Florida or Michigan. So our recovery will probably come sooner rather than later. We just weren’t as impacted as other areas in the first place.

So my little charts aren’t to indicate that the tide has turned for the Big Picture Economy. Just for out little corner of the world.

Maybe.

For now.

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS). It doesn’t include For Sale By Owner properties.

Tags: Greenboro housing statistics, Multiple Listing Service