St. Louis Real Estate-Market Watch September 13th, 2008

Saint Louis Real Estate Market Watch by Art Wagner @ Keller Williams Realty Southwest, Sunset Hills, Mo.
September 13th, 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 this week is pretty much a mirror image of last week, so I won’t bore you with reciting numbers—just click on the Market Watch report for this week and read the numbers for yourself.

The part of the current Market Watch that bears some discussion is the comparison of this week’s total average statistics versus this same week last year.  This week, we are 615 active listings fewer than last year at this time. Our pending ratios are comparable, with almost 700 fewer homes sold and 500 less expired listings in the past six months compared to last year’s same six month time-frame.

So..when your neighbor, collegue, buddy, or real estate agent expounds on the state of the real estate market and says we have too much inventory and pricing is falling into the toilet, please do us all a favor and SET THEM STRAIGHT. 

Pricing wise, our average list pricing has actually risen slightly since the beginning of the year, while average sales prices have held their own pretty closely in most price ranges.

The price ranges that have decreasing average sales prices are still less than one percent, except for the very high priced ($800,000+)  homes in St. Louis. Click this LINK to see our chart where we track six month average list and sales prices comparing this year to last year.

All this means that our local St. Louis Market is very stable, as compared to many other parts of the country. It’s those “other” parts of the country that get included in the mix when the news media gives us a blanket statement that, “The real estate market is terrible.” 

Now, all we need is the Mortgage Industry and lending institutions to discover a “cure”,  regain some real stability, thereby helping consumer confidence rise accordingly and our market will begin to show more positive signs of improvement.

Yes, I know the Fannie-Freddie take-over, bail-out, or whatever you want to call it, hopefully will help, but we’ll see what happens with that.  Lou Barnes, who writes for Inman News, put an article on Inman News last Friday entitled, “The Politic of bailout: a waiting game”.  It is definitely worth a read.  Click HERE to go to the article.

 

ARE YOU thinking of buying or selling a home?  Contact Doug Aegerter or Art Wagner for more information and a FREE Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) of your home or your neighborhood.

St. Louis Real Estate St. Louis County Market Watch September 13, 2008

St. Louis Real Estate Jefferson  County Market Watch September 6th, 2008

St. Louis Real Estate St. Charles County Market Watch September 13, 2008

St. Louis Real Estate Benchmark Report August 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 (Closed transactions last 6 months)
Expired (Last 6 months)
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, September 14th, 2008 at 5:41 pm 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.