The Ann Arbor real estate market has shown some volatility this year with price swings. So let’s start dancing with graphs below.
The first chart shows that from June 08 to 09 the (asking price) for sale price is up 4 percent, and sold price is down 1 percent with trend line for prices declining over the last year from $250k to under $220k
The next chart shows supply is relatively flat over the year as far as units go, but number of units sold is down slightly. From June 08 to 09, the sold homes are down 14 percent and the number of homes for sale are down 6 percent.
As reported in the other post, the Ann Arbor Real Estate market has about 9 months supply on average and June 08 vs. 09 have increased in months of supply from 4.7 to 5.2 months or a 11 percent increase for time on market this month.
Nationally we are seeing some stabilizing factors. In Washtenaw County we are not stable yet. I look forward to a balanced supply which is 6 months.
Last week the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that distressed properties accounted 31 percent of sales in June. Distressed sales include REO sales (foreclosure resales) and short sales, and based on the 4.89 million existing home sales (SAAR) that puts distressed sales at about a 1.5 million annual rate in June.
All this distressed sales activity has created a gap between new and existing sales as shown in the following graph that I’ve jokingly labeled the “Distressing” gap.
This is an update including June new and existing home sales data.
This graph shows existing home sales (left axis) and new home sales (right axis) through June.
As I’ve noted before, I believe this gap was caused by distressed sales – in many areas home builders cannot compete with REO sales, and this has pushed down new home sales while keeping existing home sales activity elevated.
The second graph shows the same information, but as a ratio for existing home sales divided by new home sales.
Although distressed sales will stay elevated for some time, eventually I expect this ratio to decline back to the previous ratio. The small decline in June ratio was because of the increase in new home sales.
The ratio could decline because of increase in new home sales, or a decrease in existing home sales – or a combination of both.
The third graph shows the ratio back to 1969 (annual data before 1994).
Note: the NAR has changed their data collection over time and the older data does not include condos: Single-family data collection began monthly in 1968, while condo data collection began quarterly in 1981; the series were combined in 1999 when monthly collection of condo data began.
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