Okay it’s cold today in Salem Oregon. Yikes. So I’m sitting with my nice WARM cup of coffee and going to crank out some November real estate numbers for you all for Salem Oregon.
So where did November leave us after the really good October?
In better and worse condition.
What’s better?
Well, sales were up 126% over last November which stunk beyond belief, in technical real estate lingo… it has hard to NOT do better than last year’s November’s numbers. But Nov 08 aside, the sales volume returned to a more normal volume, which is good. It is much more consistent with the early years of the decade so in essence a return to normal. So that part is good.
What else is better?
Well the median and average home prices continue to stay down which is good in order to maintain affordability in our area. If homes aren’t affordable they won’t sell. That simple. The average home price dropped 13.9% over last years $217,192 to this year’s $186, 920. The median home price dropped 11.2% from last year’s $196,500 to this year’s $174,480. This is good news for the ongoing health of the market.
So what’s worse?
Well, inventory popped up. Inventory is now at 8.3 months. Now this isn’t unexpected this time of year since most people don’t want to move close to the holidays so we tend to sell fewer homes, but we also tend to have fewer listings at this time of the year as well to compensate. Higher inventories can mean that prices are still in flux and not at the bottom yet. As I have said before, I’m not willing to really call a real estate bottom until the market stands on it’s own without the tax incentive, but we’ll have to see what inventory numbers do in the next couple of months. Overall…not bad.
Side note: Real estate market report information was crunched from data from the WVMLS.