March Ada County Home Sales

Despite the many stories about the troubles in the subprime mortgage market and how it might affect the housing market, here in Ada County the sale of homes increased in March by 159 units over February. Intermountain MLS shows 708 Single Family homes closed in March, making this the first month over 700 since last Fall. This makes for the third best March on record, despite being well below last year's record 984. We still have a couple months of hard comparisons left however, as the market didn't run out of steam and peak until June last year. A little stutter in April last year brought the April '06 total in below March '06 (a nice warning the "top" was near), but that is not likely to be repeated this year. Barely three days into the month, there are already 78 closed sales showing for April. That's no fooling!

Stronger sales in the higher end of the market made for a median list price of $230,000 and a median sold price of $228,000 ($223,735 in February). Between $200,000 and $299,000 there were 280 sales. What could be the most overstocked segment in our market right now, the $300,000 to $500,000 range, had 149 sales. There is one sale of $1.25 million showing also. I'll bet THEY are happy! There is inventory for years at that price.

Speaking of inventory, there are currently 3907 single family residences active in Ada County (no condos, townhomes, or mobiles). And there are 951 sales pending. Inventory is coming onto the market at about the same rate that it is being absorbed right now, but we'll need to see if that holds as the building and selling seasons really get under way. The Parade of Homes begins in May, which will give us another indicator of the health of our market.