Neighborhood year-end stats, Rose Park/Slant Streets

A little history lesson, as I was always told - who knows maybe it's just a myth.  Missoula used to just be north of the Clark Fork River however as it began to expand a few prominent families moved south of the river and streets/city blocks begun to form.  The Higgins family and Stephens family were two that were early movers, however the construction of their homes did not match up with the standard grid lot and block system.  As I've been told the Stephens family had their home at an angle and the road past their place (which would become Stephens Ave) created the diagonal "slant" streets as they're referred to these days.  Who knows, maybe totally untrue but it sure sounds legit.  

Need reference?  Just look at the satellite maps and you'll see where this odd grouping shows up.  As funny as it seems, I like it - it gives character to a town that is full of unique areas and unique people.  

So lets take a quick look at numbers.  In 2012 there were 54 sales in this area, which represented an increase of 12.5% as 2011 had 48 sales.  So it's interesting, the U-area which is found just to the east of this area saw their sales volume more than double, while the slant street areas just saw a slight uptick in volume.  

The median sales price in 2012 was $206,500 - while the median original list price was $224,500.  This shows that on average sellers were getting about 92% of their original listing price.  Additionally looking back at 2011 we saw the median sales price was $200,500 so a slight median sales price increase for this area.  

As I suspect we're going to see in many other neighborhoods, the Rose Park / Slant Street areas experienced a nice little increase in sales and a bump up in median sales price.  A slow and steady rise but nothing crazy.  What did interest me was the almost 8% gap between listing and selling which seems a little large to me.  It may suggest the area was rife with sellers who started a little too optimistic when first dropping a sign in the yard.

Looking at the more historical trends we see that this neighborhood was hit pretty good by the downturn, especially when looking at the median sales prices, something which the area has not recovered from at all.  Volume stayed strong though, and remember the 2009/10 numbers that are bumped up are due to the tax credits which put a big incentive on home-buying those two years.