The latest facts and figures on Lehigh Valley home sales are in from the Lehigh Valley Association of Realtors, and the numbers are better than they've been in quite a while. While I always caution people against putting too much faith in the banner headlines on CNN, USA Today, or the Morning Call (I'll explain why in a minute), many of the national columnists are starting to say that we've reached the bottom of the cycle in real estate and we'll be in a stable state before a gradual rise in the key indicators. The reason I caution against such pronouncements is that real estate is and always will be a local business. You can no more talk about the national real estate market than you can talk about the national weather forecast. It can be hot in Allentown and cold in Fargo on the same day. The same is true in real estate; try telling homeowners in parts of Texas about the booming real estate market in 2005. They'll know you weren't in Austin at the time because 2005 sure wasn't the best time to sell a house in the Texas capital.
That said, let's take a look at the April numbers in our local market. The number of homes sold was 496 which was 52 more than March, an increase of almost 12%. The average sale price was also up 10% from March (208,000 to $229,000), and the time it took the average home to sell fell from 73 days to 67. All good indicators, right? They are an improvement, but maybe not as much as you might think. In almost every year the numbers improve as the weather gets warmer, usually peaking in May and June. To find the real story you have to dig a little deeper into the numbers. I'll run my analysis and provide some comments in my next post.
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