Billings Heights West of Main Real Estate Market Less Active During This Holiday Season

The Billings Montana Heights, West of Main Street Real Estate market is less active during the Holiday Season, but is this any different than any other year?  Well, not really if you take into account that we've had the 2nd snowiest November on record, and not much of that snow has melted!

Are there still people out there hunting for homes?  You bet, in fact, 16% of the homes for sale are under contract right now, some are pending and some are contingent. This Activity Index is much more favorable to buyers where an Activity Index above 25% is much more favorable to sellers.  All listings that are active, pending and contingent are considered "unsold" and can still receive another offer should a buyer take a liking to a home that is already under contract.  2nd offers can be accepted by both parties in a "back up position" should the first offer fail to close.

• Pending--accepted contract that has had contingencies removed and is scheduled to close
  
• Contingent--accepted contract that has a few hoops to jump through such as inspection before both parties remove the contingencies and are scheduled to close

Another part of the Real Estate Market News has to do with home prices.  There is always a fluctuation, to some degree during different times of the year, so to look at one month is more like a snapshot of a moving film.  In the past 30 days 14 homes have sold in the Area 1 Heights West of Main part of Billings Montana.

Of those 14 homes that did sell, 

• listed home prices were, on average, $198,328;
• sold home price average for these same 14 homes was $192,221. 
  

In this picture, the actual sold prices were, on average, about 97% of the listed sales prices. 

Of those 14 sold homes, 7 homes had an even larger decrease from their original listing price of anywhere from 85% to 98% with an average of 92% sold price from original listing price.

Interesting point; half of the sold homes from the last 30 days had price reductions, which worked!  The hard thing to figure out is whether or not those sold prices would have been higher if the parties had started out at a lower price to begin with?  Chasing the market down is always a hard way to sell.