[Christmas – 1998] Walter was a Vietnam War veteran who had finally received disputed benefits more than 20 years late, and he wanted to use the money to purchase land and build his home. He found a tiny parcel at a low price, but the closing was delayed when Walter’s attorney discovered that, somewhere in …
Category: Real Estate
Real Estate
Real Estate Recovery: Wishful Thinking?
MLS data for Windham County shows median home prices during the first three-quarters of 2014 running 5.26% below median home prices for the same period a year ago. National real estate and other economic indicators are mixed and increasingly volatile, with even a fragile recovery, uncertain. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) reports that prices …
Can we trust the statistics ?
This year, local housing statistics do not seem to reveal an obvious trend. Uncertainty in business is a yellow light, although caution might be somewhat mitigated when we look at the national trend. In a February 25, 2014 press release, Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller 20 city index reports an 11.4% home price increase over the previous year. The release is misleadingly …
Brattleboro Real Estate Sales Up at End of 2012
Year-end (2012) MLS statistics for single-family homes show that Brattleboro home sales made solid gains in price, number of sales, and homes sold as a ratio of homes listed. Figures for number of sales in Windham County were also solidly up, but the rise in prices for the county was marginal. While the number of …
Brattleboro Real Estate – Home Prices Up
Statistics show that Brattleboro real estate at the end of November is up from this time last year exceeding the rising national trend. Nationally, the Case-Shiller 20 city index shows a 2% annual rise in home prices, as compared with a 7.3% rise in the median prices of Brattleboro homes sold during the first 10 …
First Quarter Home Sales: Cautious Optimism
According to 2011 year-end Multiple Listing Service (MLS) statistics, local Home prices dropped dramatically that year. What can we expect for 2012? For all all single family residences sold in Brattleboro in Calendar 2010 median sale price was 183,000, just $4,900 off from the median asking price of 186,900, In 2011 the median asking price …
Local Home Prices Drop
When people ask about real estate market conditions, generally the subtext is that they are really asking what things will be like six months or a year from now. Of course statistics can only tell us what has already occurred. Despite this inherent shortcoming: A sound statistical analysis can still give us a valuable perspective …
2010 Home Sales – Slump or Surge?
On January 25, 2011, the New York Times ran a story titled: “U. S. Home Prices Slump Again, Hitting New Lows.” The same day, the headline of the lead story in an online Realtor® newsletter was: “New Home Sales Surge.” Both stories were true. Each emphasized different facts. For our local real estate market, “Mixed Indicators” might …
Third Quarter Home Sales
BRATTLEBORO HOMES SALES – THIRD QUARTER REPORT Third quarter figures show that Brattleboro residential real estate sales have “bounced back,” from the May decline, so that we are at about the same lackluster level as this time last year. Number of sales are up slightly, average prices down. But due to the low sample size, …
Real estate plunges with tax credit expiration
It is always difficult to discern what the real estate statistics for the first 6 months predict for any particular year.
This year, the end of the federal home buyer tax credit was a wild card. Buyers who put a home under contract before April 30, and closed before the end of June were eligible for up to an $8,000 benefit.
Although the expiration of the tax credit was expected to prompt a drop in home sales, the actual numbers were dramatic.
Following the expiration deadline, the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) dropped 33.3 % for homes put under contract in May of this year compared with May of 2009. (Using seasonally adjusted figures, the drop was 30%).