Is Good News Afoot? Charles County, MD Real Estate Market Report July, 2008

Could it be? Is the real estate market in Charles County Maryland actually looking up? It's to early to tell right now, and the pressure caused by recent interest rate increases has pushed loan applications down 6% over the last week, and pending sales are down right now as well.

I know what you're thinking: if rates are rising and pending sales have fallen, what the heck is the good news, right? well, there's a few early indicators here that might just be good news for struggling sellers!

Sales Volume

First off, Sales are up. Not by much, but we are seeing a few more sales each month, and that number is slowly (VERY SLOWLY) rising, but it's going up none the less, which is a start.

Inventory

Second, the number of available home has stopped rising over the last 3 months. It's even (Dare I say it?) Dropping. This is important because it shows that the skyrocketing supply of available homes has started to drop. Remember real estate is all about supply and demand, and right now we need to see that supply drop!

Prices

Prices and Values are a bit of mixed nuts right now. The average sold price rose to $330k, while the median fell to $300k. Oddities like this are to be expected while drastic market shifts are happening. The long and short of it is that homes under $300k are moving the most, but the stagnation we've seen in the $400k+ range is finally starting to move a bit. This means the average sales price trends higher even though cheaper homes are selling faster.

Time On Market

Also, note the the average time on market (DOM) jumped above 140. When you look at this in relation to the volume of available properties, it tells us that fewer and fewer people are putting their homes up for sale, and that more people may be willing to wait the market out.

Summary

I'm not ready to start shouting that the market has recovered; we've still got a long road ahead of us. It's signs like this that may indicate slowly improving conditions, if this is just a blip, we'll see numbers fall along with the interest rate hikes and coming fall sales market. Stay tuned!

~Jonathan Benya
Century 21 New Millennium
9405-A Chesapeake St.
La Plata, MD 20646
301-653-8116
301-609-9000
http://www.teambenya.com