What do we do when the housing market horse kicks us off?
Well, we’re not sure yet, but that bronco is bucking. The Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors released its market report for the first quarter of 2008, and while residential properties are moving, they’re not selling for what owners might anticipate. Local real estate guru Jim Duncan gives his own analysis of the market, drawing heavily from the CAAR data, and notes a few interesting tidbits—among them, that about half of the 600-plus residential properties currently under contract spent less than two months on the market, appended by the comment "What you need to make is irrelevant to the fair market value."
So far this year, the average number of monthly sales is lower than it has been in the previous three years; the average number of days on the market per residence hangs anywhere from 10 to 50 days higher than previous years with the gap growing as summer looms large; and, according to Duncan’s analysis, about 900 realtors haven’t made a sale this year. Presumably, they haven’t seen Alec Baldwin’s speech in Glengarry Glen Ross.
Does this mean that buyers have an increasing spectrum of prices to consider among this wealth of properties? Talk among yourselves.