Statistics today on How The Market is Changing!

As we normally do in the beginning of each year, we compile the statistics of the business we have done the year before and we prepare a business plan and list of goals for the coming year. Comparing 2007 to 2006, our production was up 26% in the number of homes we sold! Although there has been very little positive media attention to home sales, 2007 was one of the best three years we have had out of the last ten!



Now, 2008 is going to be an interesting year in the housing market. If we take the first three weeks of the year, the numbers so far have been quite dismal. In Washington, DC in the first three weeks of 2007 there were 305 sales of residential properties. Let's compare that to the first three weeks of 2008 where only 165 sales have been completed. There is a very large inventory in Washington of Condo and Co-Op properties so we can wonder if this isn't skewing the numbers slightly - so we move outside of Washington to Montgomery County, Maryland. In 2007 there were 398 Sales compared to 2008 which records only 191 for the same period. The makeup of Montgomery County goes from very high end (inside the beltway in communities such as Chevy Chase and Bethesda) to high density, further out communities of townhouses and condominiums. Keeping that in mind, I looked at Bethesda only to find that 2007 yielded 46 sales in 2007 and 25 sales in 2008.



What does this mean? It means that as slow as home sales were in 2007, right now they have slowed to almost half the numbers in the same period of time! What those numbers do not show, however, is that although sales are down, the number of inquiries from potential buyers has been increasing at an extremely rapid pace. The buyer's agents in our office are swamped with calls and are booked solid with appointments for showings for the entire near term.


So, we're going to keep close watch on these numbers - instead of a monthly basis, we're moving to a weekly basis. We need to keep our buyers ahead of the curve if possible and if the number of sales picks up as quickly as we believe it will in the coming months, the best buys may start disappearing fast (as I mentioned in my post yesterday).

I will post statistics each weekend - number of listings, number of sales, number of contract, days on market, etc., for the Washington, DC metro region - Hope you'll find this helpful!

As always BE PREPARED and CHECK BACK HERE OFTEN