When the National Association of Realtors® releases its monthly Existing Home Sales report, people tend to watch every word, fact and figure in the statement in hopes of decoding the real estate market.
It's all wasted energy.
It's impossible to use the NAR report in everyday living because the NAR report is a national story. Real estate, on the other hand, is not a national market.
All real estate is local.
Think of your own town. There's at least one each of the following:
- An improving neighborhood
- A declining district
- An abandoned area
- An out-right scary street
In a national report, these regions are lumped together into one measurement.
So, when we see that the median home sale price fell over the last year, or that national inventory rose to a 9.6 month supply, it doesn't really mean much to your street in your town.
The NAR report lumps every street in every town together into one big blob of data.
Your area may be seeing explosive growth tied to school districts, or affordability, or proximity to transportation, or just plain "good value" -- regardless of what national real estate statistics report.
So, as always, be wary of "national" real estate stories -- the true story is a local one.
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