What a wild wide we have had in the last 12 months. We had a crazy cold winter that didn’t seem to stop, straight into a mild summer that never really started. Now here we are in September and the weather forecasts are calling for another chilly winter.
The real estate market was just as much of a roller coaster. 2014 started off incredibly slow, somewhat due to the weather, and somewhat due to the fact that Caterpillar wasn’t moving people around as much. By late Feb that started to shift and things got incredibly busy right up until the beginning of the school year a few weeks ago. Just how cold was it starting the year off? Cold enough for sales to be off 17% in Feb 2014, 28% in March 2014. New home getting listed in Jan 2014 were off 29%, and off 23% in Feb 2014. That’s cold.
Overall, the Peoria area market saw sales increase 5.1% though the end of July 2014 compared to the same time period in 2013. The median sales price was up 5.9% for the same time period and the inventory of homes for sale was off 1.5%.
With how slow the year was starting off, it was all about catching up the rest of the year. It took until May 2014 for sales overall to increase into the positive margin (up 1.9%), followed by 13.9% in June and 5.1% in July–year to date totals compared to 2013. The 12 month average is still off 2.4%.
Another indicator we look at is called the months supply of inventory. What this takes into account is the rate at which homes are selling compared to the supply of homes for sale. Currently we have a 6.4 month supply of homes, which means at the current rate, if no other homes were listed as of today, all of the available homes would be sold in 6.4 months. A 5-6 month supply of homes is considered a balanced market. A lower number means its a sellers market, a higher number means it’s a buyers market.
The national data doesn’t hold as much of a candle to the local numbers however. When the national news is saying that the market is up or down a certain percentage, that doesn’t always translate to our local market. In much the same way, many of the details above for the overall central Illinois area, does not translate directly to the local markets of say, Dunlap, Washington, Morton, etc. An even closer micro look at certain price ranges and certain home styles within those market might show something different also. For a closer look at certain markets-look at our other entry blog.
Thanks for checking in!
Mark and Jennifer
