About Montgomery County, OH

This information came from the Dayton Area Board of Realtors website. These are both the December statistics and also the statistics from 2009. Pretty interesting info. Please read through and let me know if you have any questions.

Dayton Area Home Sales for December and Year End 2009

Released from Dayton Area Board of Realtors

December 2009

The streak of monthly year-over-year increases in home sales continued in December as the numbers stayed in positive territory for the sixth straight month. The 726 transactions reported to the Dayton Area Board of REALTORS® MLS was 6 units, or 0.83%, more than last December's 720 sales. The pace of sales slowed somewhat, but that is typical during the holidays. However, it was still a gain, and over the last half of the year overall sales bested 2008's totals by 9%.

Despite just six more sales than last December, the sales volume for the month reached $87.4 million, compared to $74.3 million last year, an increase of 17.52%. This translates into a very healthy average sale price of $120,372, an increase of 16.5% over last December's $103,278 average per single-family unit. This December's median sale price was up by 18.9% to $96,000, compared to $80,750 last year. The percentage sale/list price was also up 1.5%.

Listings submitted in December totaled 1,246, down 9% from 1,369 during the same period last year. Listing totals in monthly year-over-year comparison were down in all but 2 months during 2009. December's listing total was the lowest of 2009, also typical for the holiday season.

The overall single-family MLS inventory at year's end stood at 7,611 available properties, and represented a 10.5-months supply. At year's end 2008 these numbers stood at 8,491 available listings and an 11.7 months supply.

2009 Figures

The first half of 2009 was a continuation of the slowdown in single-family sales affecting our area and entire country. Beginning in July, however, we saw our first year-over-year sales increase since April of 2007. This began a run of six consecutive months of sales and price increases, peaking with a 42.8% year-over-year increase in sales for November and average price increases of 16% for November and December.

This strong second half helped to curb the overall declines in sales for all of 2009 compared to 2008. We finished with 10,680 single-family sales, just 3.2% fewer than the 11,037 reported in 2008. Overall sales volume reached $1.31 billion, down 4.8%, and the average sale price finished very strong at $123,273 for the year, a modest 1.6% depreciation from 2008's $125,348. This compares to a decline in 2008 of 6.98%. The median price finished at $105,000, down just 2.8%.

A total of 21,978 single-family listings were submitted during 2009, a decline of 17.4% compared to 26,620 in 2008. Overall MLS single-family inventory began the year at 8,491 listings, peaked at 8,922 in May, and finished the year at 7,611.

Statistics compiled by John Junker, MLS Data Specialist

This is the second installment of the Twitter series. As I’ve mentioned on previous posts, before embarking on a Twitter campaign, I highly recommend that you have the follwing systems in place:

1. A website that’s keyword optimized and looks professional
2. A blog that’s updated regularly
3. An autoresponder to capture names and email addresses

If you read the first post on Twitter, you know the basics of Twitter and how to set up an account. Now, you need to get people to follow you. If you don’t have followers, you can’t make money.

However, there’s quantity of followers and there’s also quality. Having people follow you that aren’t in your target market won’t help you either.

When you first get your Twitter set up, you will need to proactively go out and get followers. Once you get to about 100 followers, people will find you and you can focus more of your attention on keeping your followers.

The first thing you should do is find out if you have any friends or family already on Twitter. As of right now, you cannot upload any kind of list. The only thing you can do is get names uploaded into a free email account like Yahoo Mail or Gmail and then have Twitter link into that account. Once that’s done, it’s quite easy to see who is and who isn’t already on Twitter. If they are there, go ahead and follow them and most likely they will follow you back.

Once that’s done, you will need to start finding people in your target market. Follow them and many will follow you as well. Think about the kinds of places your target market hangs out. For example, my target market is small business owners in the Dayton market, so the first two organizations that I followed were Dayton Business Journal and Dayton Chamber of Commerce. Then, I went into the list of people on their follower list and followed them as well. Keep doing this until you are following a couple hundred people.

Next read the tweets you are getting from the people you are following. Are they interesting? Are they spamming? If you are getting spammy tweets, then it’s time to unfollow them so you can find new people to follow.

Next, increase your Twitter visibility. There are a few places online that you can post your Twitter profile and get more followers. The most popular one that I highly recommend is a free site called Twellow, the Twitter Yellow Pages. It’s also a good idea to link to your Twitter profile from your website or blog and any other social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s a good idea to also add your Twitter address on your offline advertising like newspapers and television.

As you learn more about Twitter, you will be tempted to take shortcuts in building your follower list. There are several software packages on the market for this purpose. For the most part, these packages are junk and could even get your Twitter account banned. Don’t give in to the temptation.

You will also see these free things called “Twitter trains” that promise to get you a lot of followers in a short period of time. You could get some followers, but they are often spammers. Even worse, these programs will start sending spammy messages in your account. Again, don’t do it!

I hope you learned a lot from these simple tips and if you need more help with Twitter, send us an email and we will be happy to assist you.

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Twitter is the place to be online at the moment. Many business owners know that they should be on Twitter, but sadly, very few use it correctly. They are either not using it at all or if they are using it, they are disappointed with their results.

Here are some Twitter basics:

Twitter is a simple microblogging platform. Each post or “tweet” has to be 140 characters or less. Instead of friends, Twitter has whats called “followers.” You follow someone and they can follow you. Unlike Facebook or My Space, the “friends” don’t have to be mutual. You can follow someone without getting followed back and vice versa.

Twitter has its own set of abbreviations. If you are replying to someone else’s tweet publicly, you will use @theirusername. This is very similar to the “reply all” feature that your email program has. Yes, the person you are replying to will see it, but so will all your other followers. If you want to reply privately, use the direct message feature instead.

Twitter also has something called “retweets”. This is like when you forward an interesting email to your friends. These tweets will say RT@orginalusername in the beginning of the tweet.

Now that you have a basic understanding of Twitter, here are some ideas of things you should and shouldn’t be tweeting.

A lot of people like to post simple little things like “I’m at the store”. That sort of thing is a real waste of time as a business owner. Don’t do it. Show value or keep quiet.

You should also avoid putting blatant pitches in your tweets. Your specials and coupons are ok, especially if you decide to make the special exclusive to your followers.

The real secret to Twitter is adding true value without sales pitches. This is where most business owners fail on social media. Add in tips related to your industry. If you can make people say, “wow, this person has great tips” you are on the right track.

This is easier than you think because there are several tools that you can use to automate this process. I will be going over the best ones soon. Stay tuned!

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