April 8th, 2009
Stats 101
Today, I looked at some basic statistics to measure how the single family home market is holding up on Bainbridge. In the news and anecdotally, I am beginning to hear that there are some bright spots. My amazing mother, who has been a broker in Massachusetts for 25 years, has said that she believes her market (Sagamore Beach, on Cape Cod) has turned the corner. (Well, this comes from the woman with the Midas Touch. She is successful in ANY market.) Here are some numbers…
Single Family Residences
# Sales YTD (1/1/09 - 4/9/09)
2008 39
2009 38
It is nice to see we are holding pace, and with a flurry of activity in the past month (33 single family homes pending sale) it looks to me to be, at the very least, not negative news.
I also like to see how Windermere/BI stands. Are we doing a good job for our clients in difficult times? I looked at how long our properties are taking to sell and how much our clients are getting as a percentage of their final listed price, versus the market as a whole. These numbers were astounding:
Days on Market*, Single Family Homes (1/1/09 - 4/9/09)
Windermere 63
All Brokerages 134
Selling Price as a Percentage of Final Listed Price, Single Family Homes
Windermere 99.84%
All Brokerages 95.93%
This just goes to show that being well-prepared, appropriate pricing, and professional marketing do make a difference. This is where I should thank the team we have at Windermere/BI (you know who you are!) who make sure our marketing materials, advertising, and web presence are the best.
*Days on Market = List Date to Pending Sale
March 26th, 2009
Jumbo News
Even thought the median price of homes sold on Bainbridge in the last 6 months was $530,000, the median price of the 225 homes listed for sale is $795,000. While the market under $600,000 has remained healthy relative to the rest of the market, sales have limped along in the higher price ranges. This is in no small part due to the lack of availaility of money in the jumbo loan market. Jumbo loans (anything over the conforming amount of $417,000) have been more difficult to get and more expensive since the sub-prime meltdown. Good news came out this week from two banks that are entering the jumbo market with reasonable rates: Bank of America and ING. (See 3/29/09 Seattle Times article). It will be months before we see the effect, but in theory this would help energize market like ours where there is a large percentage of inventory for which jumbo loans are necessary.