How good (or bad) will February home sales be in Charlottesville, Albemarle and the surrounding counties?
We’ve been talking recently about what the effects the various snowpocalypses have had on the Charlottesville real estate market; people were snowed in, buyers couldn’t get out to see houses (yet another argument for high-quality photos and videos in the Charlottesville MLS), sellers couldn’t get their houses ready or activated on the market … the consensus has been that February 2010 was going to be a pretty sorry month for home sales.
But the data seem to indicate something different … February doesn’t look to be so awful relative to February 2009. I suspect that we’ll see another 10-20 contracts written at least this weekend.
This clearly does not account for canceled contracts, contracts that fall apart due to home inspections, financing or appraisal issues …
Homes – single family, attached and condos – that went under Contract in February in the Charlottesville MSA*
Homes – single family, attached and condos – that went under Contract in February in Charlottesville and Albemarle –
12 condos went under contract in February. 8 were foreclosures or short sales. Two were owned by an LLC, and the remainder appeared to be normal, private sales. This really could be the year of the short sale and more foreclosure delays.
As always, the data is after the jump.
For Charlottesville and Albemarle in February 2010 for far:
– 2 8 were new construction attached
– 31 were resale attached
– 0 9 were new construction single family detached
– 64 were resale single family detached
– 12 were condos
– 0 0 were new construction condos
(and yes, I added the above manually and they match the spreadsheet. 🙂 )
Update 1 March 2010:
Thanks to Greg, I fixed the new construction numbers above.
Charlottesville MSA for these purposes includes Charlottesville, Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene and Nelson
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Jim-
I follow the contracts as well and find it to be the most leading indicator available. I am not sure when you ran your numbers but the lack of new home sales caught my eye.
I get 19 new home sales posted Alb/Cville since 2/1/10. 9 detached and 10 attached.
http://caarmls.com/CAARReports/ListitLib/show_report.aspx?ID=7556695988
Old Trail with 7 is the leader. 4 at Belvedere.
Greg
Thanks, Greg. I responded in the post.
What am I missing or doing wrong, or is the MLS data silly?
Jim-
Looking at your criteria, you are doing something wrong. (IMHO) There never should be any sales posted under proposed attached/detached. This is simply a way to advertise what could be built and keep it out of our inventory. When sales are made, we enter the new sales as attached or detached as they are being built now and no longer proposed. There are a few instances as you found where there were pending or contingent “proposed” listings. I actually take the time to reach out to those new construction agents to have that corrected. We still get a lot of mistakes when agents copy listings or use draft feature. If you follow my new construction sale postings, I work with the builder to share as much information as possible about that particular sale. The majority of new sales in the past few months are presale and not spec, which means they are often customized. Also, we enter our presales at contract price vs base price to help others understand the comps and what is selling. I hate to see listings go in at base price and close for 10%+ or more. It sits in the MLS as a misleading comp for 120-180 days. (Not all of our builder community agrees with this practice.) Most sales do have changes during construction that impact final price, but I think best to start as accurately as possible since most buyers pricing/negotiation major upgrades at time of contract. I try to put in photo when the home is built and usually post plans.
Sorry I got carried away. You should search attached and detached, contract date, then new construction “yes”. If you want to be extra careful not to miss anything, include the proposed types as well. If this does not make sense, feel free to call me. I work hard to present new construction data that makes it easier on my colleagues to interpret.
I hope this helps.
Fixed. That the proposed showed two contracts is still perplexing, but a reminder that the MLS is only as good as the people entering the data.
That said, I certainly hope to see condo sales pick up. 🙂