I have been looking at many other websites and blogs, something I do routinely. I often see blogs that are all listings, and others with nothing but lifestyle information (that would be me!) It is difficult to find them with a good balance of everything. We are all trying to be the neighborhood experts, and some people communicate that to the client better than others. The other day I came across a blog with nothing but reports on absorption rates for the various subdivisions and neighborhoods in the area. Now I like reading blogs, but that one was a bit much, even for me. How many consumers know what absorption rate is? And why would they want to read a lengthy report about it?
Too often we are guilty of using industry language with our clients and expecting them to understand it. Even words like "inventory" mean tubes of toothpaste or boxes of cereal to them and they have trouble relating it to homes. Ask your average Realtor what absorption rate is; most professionals won't be able to explain it. They sorta know what it is, but many don't know how to get there. Consumers would much rather read an interesting story about how quickly properties are selling (or how slowly) and how it affected someone's purchase or sale of a home than read a chart, or even a sentence, full of numbers.
What got me on my soapbox out was that I decided I needed more real estate information to balance out my lifestyle posts and I started putting together numbers on Keystone Colorado properties. Keystone is a major ski resort and is very popular with second home owners. What I found was that in the last year we sold 75 condos priced under $200,000 in Keystone, out of a total of 430 sales. That is almost 17.44% of all the sales. At the moment, we have one property listed under $200,000 in Keystone! It happens to be my listing; the studio you see to the left, and it has an offer on it today. When it goes under contract tomorrow, our lowest priced property will be a studio for $214,900. The lowest priced one bedroom is $259,900. Obviously, our market has changed this year.
We sold 131 condos from $200-300,000 last year, but right now we only have 8 for sale. Try and figure that absorption rate...it is less than 3 days! I think they call it a tight market. It means multiple offers and rapidly rising prices. It also means that many people will be priced out of the market. Our sales most certainly will go down this year, at least in number of transactions, but it isn't because the market is slow! If we had "inventory" in higher price ranges, clients would move up in price if they could, but from $300-400,000 we have 14 active listings, and between $400-500,000 we have 16. The only price range that has any depth at all is over $1,000,000 where we have 28 active listings, a full 33% of our total inventory. Last year only 6% of the sales in Keystone were over $1,000,000. It is a strange market, and we are just past what is usually the peak of our listing season. It will be interesting to see how it shakes out this year.
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