Oh my, where do we start. As we all know the market has changed considerably over the past 2 years now. Here in Hernando County, as of 7/13/07 we have 4195 residential properties for sale on our MLS. This does not include those presently for sale by builders who are now selling homes for $20,000 to $50,000 less then they did last year. With our average monthly MLS sales running at approximately 190 units per month for year to date it would take us approximately 22 months to sell all of our existing listings without adding new ones. I laugh when I see agents in other parts of the country complaining that their ratio is about 8 or 9 months. We would be in heaven if that was true here.
Of course with this many homes on the market that means prices are dropping, from June 2006 to June 2007 we have seen in our MLS the average sold price drop about $30,000. The question all agents who are aware of the market is where is the bottom. In this county their are various views, some think by the end of this summer we should see a leveling off of prices, as it is, the number of listings is holding pretty steady in that 4100 range, others are thinking the the middle of 2008. Of course the big gorilla in the corner is the foreclosures. One agency is showing approximately 2400 homes in some state of foreclosure in the county. What this will mean in the coming months to sales prices remains to be seen.
Another question is how the appraisers will treat the foreclosures when doing comparables. Because of the housing mix in our community they already have difficulty in finding homes within 1 one mile radius but if they have to include "short sale" homes and foreclosures this may tend to push the market down even further.
To those of us still in the market, the important thing is to know the conditions of the market place and adjust your sales strategies so you can continue to be successful, after all it's a great job.
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