About Billings' West End

open house

1520 Lewis

Sunday February 19Th

from 1:00pm to 3 pm

here iare the price trends in west billings for the past five the median price has being reamining realtively flat the last real price increase year was from 2006 to 2007

The West End of Billings Montana has seen a slower than average amount of buyer activity, but really not too slow considering we're just about to reach the middle of January.

The area measured in today's graph is Area 8, most of which is South of Grand Avenue and West of the downtown area.

20 homes have sold in the last 30 days, with an average size of about 2,000 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 1 bath. The average sold price was $180,825 and the average number of days it took to sell those homes was 41 days!

Census bureau information is starting to be released and with some simple math you can get a feel for the length of time it is going to take to resolve the housing oversupply/foreclosure problem.

From census in 2000 to the 2010 census

1^st the population in the united states increased by approximately by 27 million people

2^nd that increase means that households increase by approximately 9.3 million

3^rd number of housing units increased by approximately 14.5 million

Soooooooo simple math says as now 2010 we have an oversupply of about 5 million housing units (new housing units 14.5 minus new households formed 9.3) which is approximately a year's supply

Again simple math says if the household formation continues at about a million a year it will take five years to absorb the excess

Not a pretty picture for the new construction market

Just some thoughts to ponder

looking at the trends in rental availability in Yellowstone county, it seems to indicate rent hikes are in the offering for tenants. when looking at the trend line there are lees homes and apartment available for rent and generally speaking when there is less of something available it means the price goes up. will be interesting to watch what happens in 2011