Tri-Cities Real Estate Market: October 2008 Stats

One of my favorite agents here, who is prone to hyperbole and an occasional negative remark or two, would call October a “train wreck of a month”. But it really wasn’t pretty so I get that, actually.

There were 155 sales in October of 2008 in the Tri-Cities market. We have to go back to 2003 to find another non-winter month with those few sales.

Can we blame it on the election? Not really, there was a slight uptick in October of ’04 during the last election cycle.

Can we blame it on the inventory? Not really, there are still plenty of homes available (1333 in October).

Can we blame it on the general economic climate? Probably – the stock market seemed to be frantically searching for bottom last month. Word of mouth held that there was no money to lend – even with a perfect credit score and a job you’d be looking at a big, fat “NO” from your lender. The last sentence just isn’t true. No matter what your neighbor tells you, there is still money to be had. Your dreams of home ownership, especially here in the Tri-Cities, can be made a reality. AND, the really good news is that our average sales price is just slightly lower, so you might get into that house for a bit less than you would have this time last year.

Download the full Tri-City Real Estate stats for October, 2008. (646k PDF)