The Real Story on the Utah Real Estate Market- Part 2
December 14th, 2007 by Mr. Homes
There’s a little over reaction regarding the Utah housing market, but there’s also some reality to it. The over reacting is that it’s a horrible time to buy a home in Utah, and that’s simply not true. If anything, it’s a home buyer’s market. The problems that we’re finding is that people aren’t being able to qualify like they used to be able to, and also people are trying to sell their homes, its taking them longer. So essentially if you have somebody who wants to buy somebody else’s home, they have to qualify and then the person trying to move up, they need somebody to be able to qualify. So its still a really good time to buy, its just taking longer. We’re almost back to some normalcy, actually, 2000, 2001, 2002 were you had you know if you wanted to sell your home or if you’re going to buy a home you had some contingencies. Well before I can buy yours, I have to sell mine. We’re seeing that again, but if you love a home and that’s where you want to be for 10, 20, 30 years, you should buy.
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:51 am
SL County 2007 Single Family Average Sales Price - 3rd Quarter $310,567
SL County 2007 Single Family Average Sales Price - 4th Quarter $286,250 -8.50%
Source: WFRMLS XL Quarterly Comp Reports
April 6th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Here is the question I ask. If a County is showing prices are down -8.5%, does that mean every home lost 8.5%? Or could it be related to the fact higher priced homes are no longer selling at the same pace?
The problem I see in reporting broad stroke averages is:
So for example
5 homes sell, 4 @ $250,000 and 1 @ a Million dollars.
5 Homes with an average of $400,000.
Then the following month you have 5 homes sell
Ranging from $250,000 to $270,000 with an average of $260,000.
According to broad stroke average the prices have fallen on average of $140,000 or 35% and obviously that did not happen.
When the reality is that the moderate price home actually increased and the higher price home crashed.
That is why I break it down to price ranges.
Below is a break down of three price points.
100-300,000
300-500,000
500,000 and above
The data represents how many active listings and how many have a sale pending along with the total of the two, with an active to pending ratio. The first data set shows that for every 4 listings one has a signed contract to purchase…
$100,000-300,000
Active Pending Total Ratio
3598 1170 4768 25%
$300,000-500,000
Active Pending Total Ratio
2297 331 2628 13%
$500,000 and above
Active Pending Total Ratio
1588 101 1689 6%
Volume is definitely down. I am not denying that. I am not trying to say that sales are upo compared to the previous years. I am pointing out that you cannot take a county wide average and yell fire in a crowded auditorium.