We all know the old saw about truth, lies, and statistics. We also know that real estate is local. One of the headlines over at Mortgage News Daily is "Existing Home Sales Drop at Fastest Rate in 18 Years". The article states that new data "mudd(ied) the real estate waters even further". They report that the existing home sales pace was 11.3 percent behind a year ago. Gloom and doom, gloom and doom...
Here in Ada county I much prefer my own headline... "Ada County Existing Home Sales Stronger Than National Sales Numbers". For the month of April to date, we have sold 543 single family homes (no condos, townhomes, or mobiles). That is well off of last year's sales pace to be sure, but breaking out the numbers we see that here in the Boise, Meridian, Eagle area of Idaho the sale of new construction homes has slipped much more than resale homes. Last year in March and April new construction made up 41-43% of the home sales. That number this year is only 27-28% of the total. Existing home sales in Ada County right now are off 8-10% from a year ago. By the numbers for April we have sold 399 resale homes this month compared to 434 same dates last year. 144 new construction homes sold so far in April 2007, compared to 324 during the same dates in 2006.
While the month is not over yet, there are currently 4233 active single family listings in Ada County. That number has been creeping up all month, and we'll have to see how that goes, whether it continues or levels off. The pending number has also increased to 985 from 955 two weeks ago. Our best sales months are just ahead of us, and I'm excited to see what we can do. My advice? Ignore the headlines, and look a little deeper into the stats if you want to know "how is the market?".
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