August Sales Were Unremarkable
In case you missed it, I read in the St. Petersburg Times a week or two ago that real estate prices in Pinellas County are now comparable to the prices we had ten years ago. So, if you're like me and bought your home around the year 2000, well, at least you haven't lost any money ... yet.
If we keep seeing numbers like we saw in August, however, you will be losing money on your ten year old property pretty soon.
Prices just keep falling. August is the proof.
We'll start as always with a quick look at the Absorption Rate (AR) or Inventory Turn. This is calculated by dividing the number of units sold in a month by the total number of units in the MLS system.
For single family homes, the AR for August was 9.0%. That's better than July's AR of 8.3%, so at least single family homes are apparently selling a little faster. The AR for condos in August was 6.5% as compared to July's 6.1%.
What this means is that in August, it took a single family home an average of 11.1 months to get sold; it took a condo an average of 15.4 months to be sold. Overall, this means the market is not in equilibrium, which happens when it takes about 6 months or so for property to be sold. So, we're still in a buyer's market with lots of inventory sitting around for a long time.
The number of sales, however, did increase in August. There were 611 single family homes sold in August as compared to July's 555. Condo's also sold at a somewhat more robust pace with 360 condos selling in August compared to July's 335 units sold.
Median prices, however, continue to erode. The median price for a single family home in Pinellas County for August 2010 was $135,000 as compared to August 2009's median of $142,000. So, in the last twelve months, the median price for a single family home in Pinellas County dropped another 4.9%.
For condos, the drop in median prices was even more dramatic in the last year. In August of 2010, the median for condos stood at $115,000 while the median in August 2009 was $138,900. That's a one year drop of 17.2% for condos.
So, that's what happened in Pinellas County during August. It may be a different story in other parts of Florida, but that's the Pinellas County story and I'm sticking to it.
Happy Selling!
-30-
If we keep seeing numbers like we saw in August, however, you will be losing money on your ten year old property pretty soon.
Prices just keep falling. August is the proof.
We'll start as always with a quick look at the Absorption Rate (AR) or Inventory Turn. This is calculated by dividing the number of units sold in a month by the total number of units in the MLS system.
For single family homes, the AR for August was 9.0%. That's better than July's AR of 8.3%, so at least single family homes are apparently selling a little faster. The AR for condos in August was 6.5% as compared to July's 6.1%.
What this means is that in August, it took a single family home an average of 11.1 months to get sold; it took a condo an average of 15.4 months to be sold. Overall, this means the market is not in equilibrium, which happens when it takes about 6 months or so for property to be sold. So, we're still in a buyer's market with lots of inventory sitting around for a long time.
The number of sales, however, did increase in August. There were 611 single family homes sold in August as compared to July's 555. Condo's also sold at a somewhat more robust pace with 360 condos selling in August compared to July's 335 units sold.
Median prices, however, continue to erode. The median price for a single family home in Pinellas County for August 2010 was $135,000 as compared to August 2009's median of $142,000. So, in the last twelve months, the median price for a single family home in Pinellas County dropped another 4.9%.
For condos, the drop in median prices was even more dramatic in the last year. In August of 2010, the median for condos stood at $115,000 while the median in August 2009 was $138,900. That's a one year drop of 17.2% for condos.
So, that's what happened in Pinellas County during August. It may be a different story in other parts of Florida, but that's the Pinellas County story and I'm sticking to it.
Happy Selling!
-30-
posted by Terry Ward at 8:37 AM
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