Eastern Panhandle Real Estate & Community Blog

Well, it's that time of the month when we take a look at the prior month and the same period a year ago thourgh our MLS data from Metropolitan Regional Information Systems.

For sellers it is still a pretty grim picture in both Berkeley and Jefferson counties. The most important numbers in Jefferson are the major drop in overall sales volume which fell in December by a whopping 37% compared to December 06 and the number of untis over the same period dropped by almost 44%. Berkeley did somewhat better with drops of 23% and 12% respectively. What does all this mean for Buyers? Well there certainly are deals to be had and it is a great time to be making that investment especially in the mid-price ranges of $250K to $325K

One of the most important numbers for Seller to be aware of is the ratio of List Price to final Sale price which in Jefferson in December ran at over 13% below list. We are accustomed to this number being between 5% and 7%

 For those of you that really get into the numbers here are links to the complete report as published by MRIS

Jefferson County Statistics - December 2007

Berkeley county Statistics - December 2007

Here's an interesting piece I just received from Wells Fargo on changes to the way FICO scores are calculated. FICO Speeds Rollout of New Product to Meet Lender Demands 

If you find this type of news helpful please let us know so we can keep it coming.

While the press might like us to believe that the end of the real estate world as we know it is nigh, here in the Charles Town and Harpers Ferry area "it ain't necessarily so". Like everyone I tended to take the press reports, based on national data and sigh bbut then I took a closer look at the Jefferson County Market Statistics published by the MLs system and found that while things are slow there are still a few bright spots. Sales volume for September 07 was down  less than 10% compared to last September and both the average sale price and median sale prices were actually up when compared to the same month last year. Also the difference between List Price and Sold Price was actually better this September which really surprised me a bit.

What we really need is for the press to stop preaching and to instill some confidence in buyers who can really get a great deal in a home right now. The bottom line is that the numbers on a per unit basis are not that bad but the shortage of buyers caused by a lack of confidence is keeping total volume down and days on market up.