Over the past few weeks, I have been involved with several multiple offer situations in the Cranford, NJ Real Estate market. As I discussed in my last blog post, I decided to go back and look at the numbers again to compare to last year, and see if we are in just a seasonal uptick, a market shift, or simply that sellers are finally learning that competetive pricing in a competetive market will sell their homes quickly.
After studying the data, it looks like explanation #3 is the most likely, as the sales activity is almost the same as it was a year ago for the Month of March 2007 and 2008. See the chart below:
MMM,YYYY | Active Listings | New Listings | Under Contract | Sold Listings | SP/LP |
| | # | Avg. LP | Med. LP | # | Avg. LP | Med. LP | # | Avg. LP | Med. LP | Avg.
DOM | # | Avg. SP | Med. SP | Avg.
DOM | |
| Mar,2008 | 111 | $520,818 | $479,000 | 38 | $532,395 | $479,000 | 16 | $427,631 | $399,900 | 54 | 18 | $375,392 | $348,000 | 68 | 97% |
| Mar,2007 | 105 | $518,779 | $485,900 | 40 | $473,228 | $449,900 | 17 | $527,935 | $519,000 | 50 | 12 | $428,533 | $415,000 | 63 | 98% |
Now, being the obsessive Realtor that I am, I decided that one month's worth of data was not sufficient to form a hypothesis. So, I looked at a 6 month period for the times ending march 2007 and March 2008. Here is that data:
| Period 1: | 614 | $531,415 | | 156 | $497,949 | | 96 | $489,817 | | 64 | 84 | $460,993 | | 67 | 97% |
|
| Period 2: | 677 | $509,932 | | 163 | $493,780 | | 99 | $466,588 | | 67 | 86 | $462,531 | | 63 | 96% |
|
The fields are the same (Active Listings, New Listings ,etc.
Period 1 is for the 6 months ending March '07 and period 2 is the 6 months ending March '08. As you can see, the active listings, new listings, under contracts and solds are all pretty close. The days on market has come down by 4 days, which is not that much, and the list to sale price ratio has dropped to 96%, which is actually still pretty healthy.
So, I think what we have here is just a balanced market of buyers and sellers. When that happens, the good homes at the fair prices will sell, and SELL FAST as some of you already know from experience. If you are a seller, please take note, and trust our pricing opinion if you want to sell quickly and be in control of the negotiations. If you are a buyer, and you see a home you like at a fair price, act quickly, make a fair offer, and you will be pleased you locked in at these prices.
Although Cranford has not seen the dramatic price drops as other parts of the country, we have certainly seen a mild price correction, which has been stabilized for the past year as these numbers will suggest. Thus, when prices start to appreciate again, this period may prove to be a good time to have purchased into a great town at a great price!
For the raw Cranford numbers for march: Click here for the Cranford Numbers
Thanks for reading. Keep checking back weekly for more.
Sean Carroll - Realtor, Team Leader
"Team Carroll" - Real Estate Professionals
www.TeamCarrollNJ.com
