Virginia Highland’s year end market report.

We have all been hearing about the doom and gloom of the real estate market, so I thought I would do some research and see how bad it actually is for Virginia Highland. These numbers are for single family detached homes only, i.e. no condos or lofts or attached town homes.

Just for those of you who like to get straight to the point: Yes, the market is down in terms of overall volume but the average prices are up and the average days on the market is down !

I will start with 2006. In the year 2006 there were 191 properties listed in the First Multiple Listing Service in Virginia Highland. These are properties that actually had a list date between Jan 1 2006 and Jan 1 2007. Obviously there were some homes on the market on Dec 31 2005 that were in the mix, so understand that when looking at these numbers. During 2006 there were 151 closings in Virginia Highlands. During the same time period, 11 properties were withdrawn (some of these were re-listed with different agents and some sold For Sale by Owner.) and 29 properties expired (also some of these re-listed with other agents or sold privately). So the ratio of listed property to sold and closed property for 2006 was 1.26 properties listed for each property sold.

In 2007 there were 240 properties listed in Virginia Highland between Jan 1 2007 and Jan 1 2008. In the same time period there were 85 properties closed, 52 properties were withdrawn and 44 properties expired. The ratio of properties listed to properties sold was 2.85 properties listed for each one sold.

So the market is definitely down. We sold 55% of the number of homes in Virginia Highland in 2007 that we did in 2006.

There were some other interesting observations I made. The average sold price went up. The average days on the market went down. The maximum sold price went down by almost 200K. Expireds were up by 50%. In 2007 35% of the homes that were listed, were sold. While in 2006, 79% of the homes that were listed were able to close.