Market update provided by Jim Paulson, Broker-Owner of Progressive Realty Corp in Meridian, Idaho.

Inventory is dropping even though historically it is still too high.  We have over nine months of available inventory based on current sales levels.

Many homes in Meridian, Idaho are sitting stagnant on the market because home sellers have refused to price them at realistic prices.  If you look at the raw numbers from the MLS it is easy to see why some homes are selling and some aren’t!

These numbers illustrate what a few people have been saying on this website for a year – we need more affordable homes since that is what is selling.  When you look at the median price of all the homes that sold in Meridian last month, you get $215,000.  If you don’t like that number look at the average and you get

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San Diego real estate performed exactly as I thought it would in 2008; the lower-priced homes (under $500,000) dropped like a ball off a table while the mid-priced homes ($500,000-$1,000,000) declined and the luxury homes($1,000,000 plus) were soft.  The key theme for the San Diego housing market decline in 2008 was foreclosure activity.  Loans were made to borrowers who had no chance of paying them.  Those failed loans resulted in increased inventory.  That market’s key financing component (non-prime loans) dried up so fewer buyers could buy the lower-priced homes; priced dropped…a lot.

In my 2009 San Diego Housing Industry Forecast, I said:

I mentioned on another post, that weblog since disappeared, that the San Diego County housing market would bifurcate.  I suspected that any income growth would happen on the top end and that the bottom half would see little to no income growth.  Combine that with a liquidity crisis and the lower-end homes would get slaughtered while the upper-end would just decline a bit. That happened in San Diego County; lower priced homes are starting to make lots of sense right now.

I explain in my 2009 San Diego Real Estate Outlook that the low end of San Diego’s housing stock is actually approaching reasonable prices:

Communities like Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos, and Escondido in the North County declined as much as 55%, peak to trough.  The entire South Bay experienced severe declines.  Lower income areas of the City of San Diego and the East County experienced steep declines.  Some areas declined so much that their prices have retreated to point where investment makes complete sense.  The fundamental value of those properties, as measured by the price to rent ratio, is such that it’s less expensive to own rather than to rent; we haven’t seen that phenomenon in San Diego County since 1999. Continue reading this post

Market update provided by Julie Brittain of Team Brittain with Keller Williams Realty First in North Atlanta.

I’m a numbers person.  I love to present my clients with the facts…

Closings for single family homes have dropped 34.2% since last July.

The average sale price for a single family home dropped 8.3% from July of 2007 to July of 2008. The average sales price for condos and townhomes dropped 6.2% from July of 2007 to July of 2008.

Year to date average prices for condos and townhomes are below what they were in 2003 and year to date average prices for single family detached are slightly higher than they were in 2004.

When this housing market turns around, the sales prices will recover rapidly.  I believe that prices have neared a bottom, so this is a great time to buy.  Our months-supply of homes is at an unprecedented high. The reason… Continue reading this post

Market update provided by Teresa Mihelic of OCDreamhomes in Orange County, California.

This has been a very interesting year for our real estate market in Orange County. And this time of the year, we would have expected that the demand (the number of new pending sales) would have started to decline as we head into the holiday season.

Well, not this year. 

It didn’t follow the “expected” cycle for the first half of the year (it constantly kept growing with a few step backs), and it has increased by 130 homes in the past 2 weeks and now totals 2974 pending sales.

To give some perspective, at this time of the year over the last few years, these were the numbers:

2008: 2,974 pending sales
2007: 1,180 pending sales
2006: 2,208 pending sales
2005: 3,058 pending sales

Interesting fact:

Demand is surpassing the prior 2 years, and looking like 2005 numbers. We will continue to see an influx of

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Posted on behalf of Steve Hamilton of Fonville-Morisey Realty in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The Wake county real estate market experienced a 31% drop in sales August 08 vs August 07 for detached homes. Despite this significant drop in the number of sales the average sales price for a detached home only dropped 0.19%. Inventory is up approximately 25% and there is approximately a seven month supply of housing. In most areas and in most price points, it is a buyer’s market.

I now have all of my listings staged before going on the market and continually remind my clients that they need to price their home aggressively or it will not sell.

For more regional updates, click here.

To learn more about Raleigh, North Carolina real estate click here.

In case you are not familiar with Brooklyn New York, let me give you some of the facts…

• The estimated population of Brooklyn is approximately 2.6 million
• Also known as Kings County, Brooklyn is the 7th largest county in the U.S.
• Brooklyn covers approximately 71 square miles
• Brooklynites represent over 90 different ethnic groups, 140 nationalities, and speak over 130 different languages

Brooklyn truly is a melting pot and the market conditions and property values vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. On the high end of the Brooklyn market you have many areas that are still realizing appreciation in property values. These areas include Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Williamsburg and several other neighborhoods towards the northern tip of Brooklyn. There is always strong demand in these areas due to the easy commute to Manhattan (minutes via bus or subway). These areas offer much more bang for the buck when compared to prices in Manhattan.

On the flipside, there are other neighborhoods in Brooklyn that are hurting right now due to the mortgage crisis that has affected our entire country. Areas like Bushwick and East New York are experiencing foreclosures at record numbers while many homeowners are trying to negotiate short sales with their lender so as to salvage their credit ratings. Continue reading this post