Missoula's neighborhood trends, Frenchtown

My last one!  The Frenchtown area sits about 12 to 16 miles west of Missoula heading down I-90, it's fairly spread-out but does feature a small town core that has a few commercial businesses, a grade school and high school, and even a nice little golf course.  You can find some homes on smaller lots but the majority of homes you'll find in Frenchtown are bigger homes on larger parcels of land.  For the sake of applying some sort of boundaries to this area the region in which I'm pulling data from stretches as far east as Hwy 93 North (known as the Wye, or O'Keefe Meadows) and no further west than Huson, so I'm not including the 6-mile road or 9-mile areas.

In 2010 there were 41 residential sales with a median sales price of $229,925.  For these 41 sales the average time on market was 162 days.  The median listing price came back at $255,500 showing that homes were selling for 90% of their original listing price.  In 2010 there were 6 foreclosure sales.

In 2011 the amount of residential sales went down just a bit to 39 total sales with a median sales price at $215,000.  The average time on market for these sales was 181 days.  The median listing price for these same sold homes was $229,000, showing that homes were selling for about 93% of their original listing price.  The amount of foreclosure sales also went up a bit to 8 sales in 2011.

A fairly steady pace for volume in the area but seeing a near $15,000 drop in medians shows that the greater Frenchtown area is trying to find it's bottom values.  This could continue on in 2012 especially if the amount of foreclosed homes continue to rise, in 2011 foreclosures consisted of 21% of the market.  Time on market is also a big factor on here, if it takes on average half a year for homes to sell out there.  2012 might continue with the same challenges as buyers might continue to return to Missoula or look down the close-in Bitterroot Valley for better priced listings.

A look at the 12-month absorption rate right now shows that there are 19.69 months of inventory listed for sale right now in the greater Frenchtown area.  This shows a really big over-supply right now which further gives evidence of a continued struggle to sell in 2012.