A good August for the nation, not so much for Missoula

So I was reading this CNN/Money article today: http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/23/news/economy/existing_home_sales/index.htm?hpt=T2

It talks about how existing sales rebounded in August, up from a big slide in July. I thought I’d check it compared to Missoula and unfortunately the news isn’t the prettiest. So lets look at the basic news nationally, we’ve got 11.6 months of listed inventory, sales came up 7.6% in August compared to July, and the August median sales price nationally was $178,600.

Now, look at Missoula’s August: 52 sales, median sales price of $195,300, and about a 16.8 month supply of inventory overall. Furthermore there were 82 sales in July - so Missoula went down 36.6% overall. If you pull out new construction and compare apples to apples you get 80 sales in July and 47 sales in August - so a 41% decrease. Ugh. Many REALTORS(R) in this area can attest, August was slow.

Now, there could be some signs of hope though, we’re nearing the end of September and so far we’re at 50 sales to-date with a week to go, so September will be better than August, that’s good to see. Also we’ve got 112 houses in town showing as “under contract” so there is still healthy activity. If the September trend remains the same we’ll have about 65 sales at the end of the month - a 38% increase from August!