February Ada County Home Sales

Single family home sales in Ada County rose to 549 units in February over January's 503 units. Median listing price was $229,000 while median sold price was $223,735. At the moment there are 3681 active single family listings. That is a further improvement from January's inventory level of just over 3900. These figures do not include townhomes or condos, or single family with acreage. Pending sales figures are also good, with 852 showing currently.

Because of the way the market ramped up in early 2005 and 2006, year over year comparisons for the next four months are still going to be difficult to make. The newspapers don't seem to know what to do with the numbers except to point out that this year we are way below last year's sales numbers. And while it IS true that you can no longer expect to sell your home in two days for $10,000 more than your neighbor got last month for his, the sales and inventory numbers show that there are homes being bought and sold daily here in Ada County.

Many of the builders are working through the excess inventory they had at the end of the fall, and over the last few weeks I've noticed a few builder prices for under construction models near fall levels. Not all builders, of course, but some are pricing new starts closer to fall price levels, and some of the incentives are quietly going away. I noticed a number of new lots and new build listings in the MLS this morning as well.

Over the next week or so I plan to look in more detail into some of the specifics of our Boise and Meridian real estate markets. I'm curious to know if we are really over loaded with higher end resale homes in Eagle. And are we still over-built in the $300K to $500K range? Tales are being told that new inventory south of the freeway is moving again... what's up with that? Stay tuned, I plan to find out.