Monthly Charts Updated with September Data
October 15, 2007
The monthly charts (Fairfax and Loudoun) are updated today with September MLS data (look for the charts under Topics-->>Market Conditions). There is no good news with one exception: Loudoun average price actually increased 5% over August. Go figure...in fact, Fairfax average price took a big drop. Both Fairfax and Loudoun are showing total sales significantly down from last month. September is generally a slow month. Keep watching.History does not necessarily repeat itself. What is interesting is that the inventory is remaining constant as opposed to last year at this time when it started a steep decline into the winter months. The decline last year was primarily do to withdrawals from the market. Although withdrawals are up, they are not as high as last year. You can see these trends on the Daily Market Watch (now called Weekly). Check out the links on the Front Page top-center.
It has been a long dry summer in the DC metro area. Looks like the real estate draught continues into the winter and beyond. I am now thinking we need to dissipate the short sale and foreclosure inventory before we see any turn around at all. Odd...last year at this time I was saying the same thing about investor dumping.
It is still a good time to be a buyer.
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Jeff,
My housing logic is feeling contrarian to yours.
Those with good credit, down payments, and salaries are getting a lot for their money at the upper end.
The bottom isn't selling because it's still unaffordable, even moreso to out-of-work construction workers.
I think September is a difficult "read" as well because sales volumes were at 10-year lows. A house just sold in our neighborhood for a price way above its competition to an out-of-state buyer who didn't know the market here. Of course they still have a house on the market in another state. So perhaps the new house will be a REO a year from now . . .
It is a surprise to see the price rise in Loudon County. I expected the price drop in Fairfax, and really the whole are. The drop doesn't necessarily mean that the price of a house went down by that amount...it could also just mean that more smaller and cheaper houses were sold during the month. We should have expected that because of the credit crunch for jumbo loans. It was easy to get conforming loans for lower price houses, but difficult and more expensive to get jumbo loans for higher priced houses. So of course, we'd expect more lower priced houses to sell, thus bringing down the average price.
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