NWAs Residential Market Almost Stable, Analyst Says
by January 21, 2013 12:00 am 79 views
The decreasing inventory of homes for sale is helping to stabilize Northwest Arkansas’ residential real estate market, market analyst Paul R. Bynum wrote in a recent report.
Total inventory has fallen 56 percent from the “glut” reached in August 2007, Bynum said in a video version of the report.
Bynum, the owner and principal broker of Mount Data Real Estate, states in his year-end report on Benton and Washington counties that the months of inventory index, or ratio of buyers to available homes, is a strong indicator of the health of a real estate market. Five to six months’ supply shows a stable market, with more indicating a buyers’ market and less indicating a sellers’ market.
The months of inventory average for previously owned homes through all of 2012 was 6.6, he found, down from 7.3 the previous year. The average for new construction was 4.4 months through 2012, compared to seven months in 2011.
“We are almost at a stable market,” he wrote in the report.
The median sale price of previously owned homes rose 17 percent over 2011, to $129,925. A total of 5,260 such homes were sold, up only 1 percent. But the higher sale prices pushed total volume up 15 percent, to $867 million.
For new homes, the median sale price rose only 2 percent, to $215,000. However, the number of homes sold jumped 34 percent, to 798. That resulted in a 40 percent gain in total volume, to $189 million.
Overall, the median sale price of $142,000 is up 18 percent from 2011. Total sales volume for all homes came in at $1.06 billion — the first time in five years that volume has topped the billion-dollar mark, Bynum noted.
On average, homes were on the market for 66 days from listing to contract, and buyers are paying just over 97 percent of the list price for a home.
“All in all, 2012 shows a cautious recovery,” Bynum said in the video report.