Marty's Mat-Su Market Memo

There is still a huge gap between the average sales price and the average asking price.  That is why there is also a huge difference in days on the market for the inventory as a whole compared to the closed listings.  The houses that are in the lower price ranges sell fairly quickly.  Higher priced homes are on the market much longer.

The chart below shows the stats for residential properties for the week of 4-17 to 4-24, 2007.

Interestingly, the new listings are not growing significantly.  In fact, the total inventory is down as the chart below shows.  Sales are climbing at a healthy rate while we are not getting a surge of new houses on the market.  I believe that is because builders are not building on speculation as much as they did in the past few years. 

The next two charts, (click to expand), show that although we are selling as many and actually a few more houses that we have in  previous years, the average sales price is actually down slightly.  I think we have reached a plateau that will remain until local incomes increase.

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