Residential Rebound (Opinion)

Probably like you, we keep hearing good things about the residential real estate market in Benton and Washington counties.

Just recently, in fact, the latest Skyline Report revealed a 53 percent jump in building permits for the last six months of 2012 compared to the last six months of 2011. Of that and other data, local economic guru Kathy Deck said the market “is nowhere near where it was at the peak of the boom, but it is rising from what we can consider the bottom.”

Coincidentally, the Skyline Report came out just as we were putting the finishing touches on our annual “Upscale Real Estate” issue. As usual, it includes a look at the area’s top-grossing residential real estate agents.

That led us to put Deck’s assessment to the test by using our 10 most recent lists as a barometer. Turns out she was dead on.

In 2003 and 2004, we listed every agent with sales volume of $1 million or more. In 2003, that number was 433, with total sales volume of $1.78 billion. In 2004, the number shrank to 343, but the volume spiked to $2.23 billion.

In 2005, the cut-off for agents was raised to $2 million, but it still included 411 agents. The volume, meanwhile, rose another 26.3 percent, to $2.8 billion.

That was the peak, and the number of agents and the total sales volume fell every year from 2006 to 2010, when a mere 190 agents qualified for the $2 million cut-off and had total volume of $897.9 million.

Those numbers climbed to 218 agents and $1.09 billion in volume in 2011. This year, even though we raised the threshold for agents to $2.5 million, we still listed 215 agents, with total volume of $1.29 billion. That’s a 43.6 percent increase over 2010.

In other words, we finally feel comfortable enough to put it in ink: The residential real estate market is heading in the right direction.