1st Quarter Tri-Cities, WA Housing Mini-Stats

These stats are as of 3/12/2010, which I know is a month ago, but they give a pretty good snapshot of the first quarter of 2010’s business.

Which has been excellent!

There were 988 listings on the market, whereas a year ago there were 1178 listings available.  Fewer listings = low supply.  What happens when supply gets low?  If demand stays the same or increases, we see people paying a premium for what is available.  That means it’s a seller’s market.

But, we can’t paint with that broad of a brush in this case.  We have to look at the price points.  In certain price ranges, we have low supply and high demand, which absolutely makes for a seller’s dream situation.  However, the same low supply in a price range with little to no demand makes for a buyer’s market.  Make sense?

The highest demand is for the lower-priced homes.  As a rule, homes under $200,000 are selling at a pretty fair clip, because that’s the range people are buying in and there isn’t one available on every street corner.

That’s why the average sales price for a home is currently $185,847, but a year ago it was $180,177.

The days spent on the market is decreasing, too. Just by 4 days, but 4 days a quarter makes two weeks by year-end and that’s a 13% decrease in marketing time.  How’d you like to be on your way to your new home half a month earlier than you thought?  Pretty nice deal, I’d say.