http://www.TwinCitiesUSA.com/video/Market-update-6-27-22mov

STEVE:  Hi, this is Steve Westmark, Counselor Realty.  Thanks so much for watching my video blog this week.  The statistics have come in for the first five months of 2011.  I thought I’d give a little bit of insight into what’s been going on.  First of all, comparing your numbers against 2010 when we had a tax credit, the first four months of the year were very strong, and now we’re beginning to see the trend where the sales are getting stronger for the month of May compared to the month of May last year when there was a non-tax credit.

I had mentioned earlier that our sales overall in 2008 were not built on a tax credit.  And I thought that the 2011 numbers would be about the same.  Well, that is in fact true.  Our 2010 numbers in unit sales are off by about 10% for 2011 but were ahead of the 2008 numbers by about 8%.  As you’ll see by this graph that’s only over the last three months, you’ll see how the difference is between the unit sales that were happening when there was a tax credit last year and now how we’re getting stronger this year.

The next graph that I’m going to show you is a graph that shows the listings on the market.  This is a positive thing on the market in that you’ll see that in fact our inventory is not as large this year as it was last year.  And so with the sales beginning to become stronger in comparison to what they were last year, we should have a much stronger end of the market this year.

The next graph is showing the type of listings that are coming on the market, those that are traditional sellers that have homes to sell that are not bank owned.  The next one is bank-owned, and the next one is short sales.  What you’ll see is that we’re continuing to see the same amount of lender-owned and short sale properties coming on the market. 

This next graph though gives you an illustration of really what’s been going on in the area of pending sales that have been happening in those makeups, and if you went back to look at the last graph, you’ll see that as fast as bank-owned are coming on the market, they’re also selling and going off the market.  What is going to help our marketplace in the future is seeing that the lender-owned number of listings coming on the market becomes less and less as well as the short sales.

That is what’s going to turn around the market.  Now the next three graphs I’m going to show you have to do with pricing.  The first graph is showing median sale pricing.  And what you can see over the last three years is that the median sale price both by month and both by year to date that in 2009 it was at a number for 159 for a year to date.  Then it was 168 for 2010 when there was a tax credit, and without the tax credit, we’ve seen a decline to 147,000.

This next graph is showing you what’s happened with the average sale price, and it kind of follows the same type of graphs that happened with the median where it went up slightly in 2010 and has dropped down again in 2011.  And the last graph that I’m going to show you is the graph that shows price per square foot.  And I think that’s a good way to look at what’s really happening in the market, that in fact, our dollar per square foot on houses has been dropping from last year, but I believe it’s going to start balancing out.

But once again, the whole strength of our marketplace for our sellers out there that want to see a more firmness in pricing will happen as we have less bank-owned and less short sale properties on the market.  Thanks for watching this update.  So I look forward to going over our statistics with you for the first half of 2011 for my next month’s report on the real estate market.  Thanks a lot and have a great day