Starting the year off strong: Missoula's early numbers

It's bee a time of reflection for me, just about 1 year ago my mother decided to close down the local RE/MAX franchise that she'd owned for 16 years. As a group most of our office joined up with the local Windermere office and we've loved it. The Missoula market was very choppy at that time, our early winter/spring was the worst we'd seen in terms of volume. We came out of the winter with a solid summer market but the lasting effects of a down winter wound up putting Missoula's volume of sales at another decline compared to the years before.

So it got me to thinking about 2012 so far and the market leading into it. This year we're finally comparing "apples to apples" as we look at 2011's market to 2012's. I've been interested in seeing how our market is doing this year and so I've put together two quick comparisons. First off the Nov/Dec/Jan market comparisons and then just YTD to YTD for 2011 and 2012.

Starting with looking at 11/1/2010 through 2/1/2011 and comparing that to 11/1/2011 through 2/1/2012.

• In the prior year for Missoula there were 152 sales with a median sales price of $215,500. Of those sales 16 were foreclosures, or 10.5% of all sales.

• Jumping forward to this current comparison there have been 177 sales with a median sales price of $201,000. Of those sales 21 were foreclosures, or 11.9% of all sales.

So the good news? Missoula's volume is up in a big way for it's "slowest" time frame of the holidays and winter months. We've seen an improvement of almost 16.5% in volume. That's big, especially considering that the market conditions were relatively the same, and foreclosures have not dramatically had an increase in the market. The dip in the median I expected for the main reason that this time last year the market had just exhausted it's first time home buyers as the tax credit time-frame to close a sale ended in September of 2011. This time around our market of buyers is much more diverse and we've seen more sales across the full spectrum.

Now lets just look at 2011 YTD to 2012 YTD (1/1 through 2/11):

• For 2011 there were 55 sales with a median sales price of $212,000 with 7 foreclosures sold that consisted of 12.7% of the market

• For 2012 so far we've had 62 sales with median sales price of $188,750 with 11 foreclosures sold that consisted of 17.7% of the market

Volume is up, which is good, a 12.7% increase, however in the shorter range the median sales price dip is a trend worth watching, if that stays this low we're going to see that the 2011 median sales price increase for our market as a whole be a one time thing. It's still way too early to determine of 2012 is going to keep putting downward pressure on sales prices and values, but this early start suggests it might. Also the bump-up in foreclosures re-sold is worth watching, as the robo-signing delays are now in the past it's expected that more foreclosures will infiltrate our market, that's another trend that could punch values down some more.