St. Louis Real Estate-Market Watch April 5th, 2008

St. Louis Real Estate Market Watch by Art Wagner @ Keller Williams Realty Southwest, Sunset Hills, Mo.
April 5th, 2008
The Anatomy of St. Louis Real Estate

The St. Louis Home for Sale Team provides a weekly St. Louis County and Bi-weekly St. Charles County Market and Jefferson County Market Watch Report to review and plug into your home buying or selling scenario. Your questions and comments are welcome!

The St. Louis Real Estate Market for the first week of April continues a fairly flat performance so far. We are still seeing a small increase in active listings, and a small increase in homes sold, however, our pending ratio has dropped by more than 1 percent this week. With the small increases in active listings and homes sold, we would expect the pending ratio to remain close to constant. However, we also are seeing a decrease in the number of homes accepting contracts, which will drive the pending ratio lower.

Is buyer activity slowing?? We think so, at least a bit. We are not seeing the normal increases in listings that we have seen in previous years at this time. Homes accepting contracts and the pending ratios in most price ranges are also down considerably from one year ago.

To do some of your own analysis, check out our Market Watch report from March 30th, 2007. It’s interesting to note that average listing prices aren’t all that much different. HUH?? This points to two ideas; one, our market is a bit more stable than other parts of the country OR two, there are still a lot of over-priced homes in the market. We think it’s a blend of both, but evidenced by the decreases in home sales and the buyer activity falling off a bit, we have to look at pricing first.

The other “monkey wrench” in our market this year is everybodies question, “What’s the Fed going to do next??” and “When will the credit crunch be over?”. There are a good number of buyers and sellers still waiting to see when our market will really hit bottom. There are also buyers wanting to get into the market that are facing challenges with getting a mortgage now that lending requirements are tighter. “Gosh, you mean I actually have to have some money to get a loan?”

It seems that the “experts” are now admitting that the challenges with the housing market and the economy are worse than they expected and predicted last year. GO FIGURE!

Go to Bankrate.com for current mortgage rates and a great synopsis of how this whole thing started. Also, if you want to see what the Mortgage Industry is reporting to their colleagues, check out Mortgage Implode.

For some great information regarding the real estate market and a really cool home-value calculator, check out the report just released by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) at http://www.ofheo.gov/.

Thinking of buying or selling a home? Contact Us for additional information tailored to your specific needs.

St. Louis Real Estate St. Louis County Market Watch April 5th, 2008

St. Louis Real Estate Jefferson County Market Watch April 5th, 2008

St. Louis Real Estate St. Charles County Market Watch March 28th, 2008

St. Louis Real Estate Benchmark Report March 2008

The report begins by breaking the market into 17 distinct price ranges. Then we show current listings and current pending listings which creates a pending ratio, which is helpful on a week to week basis to see if activity is increasing or decreasing in a price category.

The report also shows the last 6 months of results and compares the data to the same 6 months of the previous year.

The Market Analysis includes data on:

Number of Active Listings (Current)
Pending Sales (Going to closing)
Pending Ratio (Active vs.Pending)
Sold (Last 6 months)
Expired (Last 6 months)1
Average List Price
Average Sale Price
Average List to Sales Price %
Days on Market (DOM)
Months worth of Inventory (Based on current pending rate)
Buyers Market: > 7 months of listing inventory

Transitional Market: 5 - 7 months of listing inventory (sometimes called a “balanced” market)

Seller Market: < 5 months of listing inventory

Average % Sale Price/List Price (0-30), (31-60), (61-90), (91-120), (120+)DOM

Notice that you’re paying a penalty for over pricing. . .hey. .it’s a fact!!

The Benchmark Report is produced monthly for:

Single Family Residence
Ranch Style
1300 - 2000 sq.ft.
3 Bedrooms
1.5 Bathrooms

Art Wagner can be reached at art@stlouisrealestatevoice.com

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 10:47 am and is filed under St. Louis Market Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.