Cindy's Blog

I was on the phone yesterday with someone in California, and it really hit home to me how much luckier we are here in the Richmond area than in much of the rest of the country. While things are definitely slow, and certainly much slower than any seller would want it, we are at least (knock wood) not competing at every turn with foreclosures, as they are in California, Florida, and many other places you've probably read about or seen on the news.

To take a year by year look at the market as we really get into the "swing of spring"- here are a few facts and figures to mull over:

(All of these numbers and data are courtesy of the Central VA Regional MLS, and are based on comparisons between last March/ April and this March/ April)

We still have over 38,000 active listings in our mls- of course this is every price range, and every area.

The average days on market has only actually gone up by 12 days year over year, to reach the current 75 days. (This is definitely skewed by area, price, etc., but is just a general idea of our marketplace as a whole)

As usual and expected, the "first time buyer" range of 125k- 225k is the one with the most movement as far as pending listings. Particularly with the incredibly low interest rates, the first time buyer $8000 tax credit, and the fact that those things have swung the benefit back from renting to buying, there are definitely more first time buyers out there. That's great news if you are a seller with a home in that price range, but if you have your home listed and it's in the price range beyond the $250's or so, you are definitely going to miss out on some of those first time buyers. More buyers are making smarter decision to not overextend, and even if they wanted to, the lenders are not inclined to let them.

As for price, the median price has gone down as well (funny how the price of the things that we need to buy seldom goes down, even though the value of our house or the wages someone is willing to pay us doesn't change!) from approximately 263k to 251k. In addition to that, the overall Asking to Sold price ratio has indeed dropped from 98% to 96%.

 In a nutshell- if you're putting your house on the market, you need to bring your A game, and you need to price it right. Even still, you can often expect that you won't get quite what you want. But it is getting better..