Scotch Plains Market Report - May 2014

By Wayne Zuhl

Real Estate Agent with Remax First Realty II 0790808

June 23, 2014 10:35 PM

The Scotch Plains real estate market is on track for an excellent summer!

Before you buy or sell a Scotch Plains home, it's wise to do a little research into the market conditions. Here's what you need to know for May of 2014.

Inventory: Check out this graph showing the real estate inventory in Scotch Plains over the last 3 years.

It's easy to see the seasonality of the Scotch Plains real estate market when you look at this much data at one time. See the big bump in inventory - the blue line - every summer? Notice how much higher it was in 2012. That was the last of the buyers market that Scotch Plain saw - too much inventory to sell quickly. Prices dropped and homes sat on the market for months.

2013 was a typical year - inventory down in the winter when buyers and sellers want to stay put, and inventory up in the summer when buyers and sellers want to get moving. This year is shaping up exactly like last year's inventory.

Prices: The trend in prices in Scotch Plains isn't so obvious and so predictable. Here's the graph representing prices over the last 3 years. The blue line is the sale price and the red line is the list price. List price is a good indication of buyer confidence, and sale price is a good indication of market value.

There is no obvious seasonality to the data, but the good news is that sale prices are certainly holding steady and trending upward. With minor fluctuations, prices have averaged at $481,423 over the past 3 years. The average sale price in May was $527,655.