March Lake of the Ozarks Real Estate Update

     I was all set up to report on statistics regarding new housing starts on a national, state and local level and how I felt that would affect existing house sales.  However, I read an article today that reported a sharp fall in U.S. homes sales and stated that they were at their lowest level in nine months.  It went on to talk about this being worse than economists’ expectations despite the 30- year mortgage rate falling to a 20-month low.

     This sounded fairly dire to me so I decided to dig a little deeper and take a look at how the lake area real estate market compared to national sales.  After reviewing data, I discovered that lake area sales were also at the lowest level not just in 9 months but in the past 12 months!  The average sales price was also at the lowest level since March 2014!

     Still sounds pretty dire.  Before panic could commence and I started looking for another job; I began plowing into home sale stats back to January 2005.  When I finished this review; I saw the real trend in the recent sales “plummet”.  Each year since 2005, home sales and their average sales price have been the lowest in January with few variations when the average sales price was up slightly over another month or two.  The only interesting exception to this was January of 2006 when the average sales price was the highest in a month to month comparison of the previous year.  As you may recall, the market was peaking at that time and average sales prices were highest in 2006.

     Last month, the national inventory of unsold homes on the market slipped 0.5 percent from a year ago to 1.87 million. It was the second straight year-on-year decline.   Even at January's sales pace, it would only take 4.7 months to clear houses from the market, down 2.1 percent from a year-ago. A six months' supply is viewed as a healthy balance between supply and demand.

     The average time on the market over the past year for residential homes has ranged from four to six months.   Lake of the Ozarks real estate is a unique marketplace in that it includes a large geopgraphical area and each area holds a wide array of property types.  In assessing the amount of marketing time and at what price to expect a property to sell; you need to concentrate on the sales data for the type of property and specific area where it is situated.

    Lake area sales data has been obtained from the Lake of the Ozarks MLS based on all property type sales over the time frame from 2005-2015.

    Michael has been selling real estate at the Lake of the Ozarks since 1981.  He is one of the most respected brokers in the area.  If you would like to work with Michael in the sale or purchase of property, contact him at 573.365.SOLD or cme@yourlake.com  View thousands of lake area listings at www.YourLake.com $1 million plus homes at www.LakeMansions.com   You can also view each months’ article, ask questions and offer your opinion on Michael’s real estate blog, www.AsTheLakeChurns.com