What is the condition of the real estate market in the West Windsor NJ and other surrounding towns in the greater Princeton area?  Homeowners, not just those who are currently selling or buying their house are concerned about the implications of the sub-prime mortgage problems and predictions of further home price declines. The answer for West Windsor may be the most positive one.

The Press has been consistently reporting that now is the “buyers” market and that five years ago it was “sellers” market. By this, people usually mean who has the "upper" hand in the market, or whether there are more buyers than sellers in the market.  In the buyers market home prices usually decline, in the sellers market - home prices increase.

In the real estate language buyers and sellers market are often defined  by “inventory accumulation”, which means how many months it would take to sell the houses on the market now (at the average historical monthly sales rate), if no additional houses came on the market. This technical sounding term is a result of simple arithmetic: dividing the total number of the available houses on the market by the average number of sales per months. For example, if there are currently 20 houses on the market and on the average 2 houses per month are sold, the inventory accumulation equals two.

In the past it was believed that the “buyers” market is when the inventory accumulation exceeds 6 months. It is considered to be the “sellers” market when inventory accumulation is less then 6 months.

West Windsor inventory accumulation is one of the lowest in the area at 3 months. Looking at the chart bellow it would appear that Hopewell NJ is the only market (out of the five examined) that by this definition is “buyers” market.

                                         Princeton Area Housing Inventory and Accumulation - January 2008* 

This data seems to contradict what we hear on the news about the real estate markets that it is a buyers market. What is happening is that the sellers are holding off putting their homes on the market, or taking them off the market, resulting in the low supply of homes for sale and driving the inventory accumulation numbers down. That does not necessarily mean that the prices of homes will go up (which is what usually happens when there is scarcity of supply).  The buyers are not rushing into the market and are waiting for the prices to go down.

What this means for the Princeton area home buyers is that is still a good supply of homes without the pressure of the imminent price increases. For the West Windsor house sellers the low inventory can ease the downward pressure on home prices. It does not mean that home sellers can now count on home appreciation if they bought their home within the last two-three years.

 You can read more about the Princeton NJ area real estate statistics in the following articles:

  Princeton real estate -how long does it take to sell

  Princeton Real Estate Market Trends

  What is Going On In The Princeton Real Estate Market?

  Princeton Real Estate -Are the House Prices Up or Down?

  Princeton Real Estate - What is the outlook?

 Princeton Real Estate -Are the House Prices Up or Down?
 

*Data is based on Trend MLS and is not guaranteed.

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