Last Updated on Saturday, 07 March 2009 09:59 Written by Carl Johnson

January has come and gone along with the snowy and cold weather. But it has left a chill in the market to start the new year. Sales are down 11% from last January....

January has come and gone along with the snowy and cold weather. But it has left a chill in the market to start the new year. Sales are down 11% from last January and the average cost per square foot of a home sold is down about 2%. I would like to blame this on the cold and snow we have had, but if I recall correctly, last year was pretty bad too.

Sales are slow; there is no doubt about that. Even the number of homes put under contract is down from last year, which is an indicator of sales going forward. Part of the dip is due to job losses in the area. It seems we are seeing increases in incidents of buyers putting a home under contract and then losing their job and not being able to complete the purchase. Job losses will put a damper on home sales for the foreseeable future. The only positive here is that prices are coming down, making homes more affordable for those that may be dealing with a single income.

The number of homes on the market is also down. This helps a bit for the sellers who are competing with fewer homes. As stated in past reports, many home owners in the Amherst area who do not have to sell their homes have chosen to wait for better times.

In terms inventory of homes currently on the market we are about even with last year. January and February typically marks a seasonal peak and this year is no different with a 15 month supply of homes in the area. This past year we were normally around a 9 month supply. To put this in perspective, in the hot market of 2005 we had around a 6 month supply of homes. But even in that year January peaked to 13 months.

The other disappointing market statistic is the days on market of homes. This number shot up in December and went even higher in January. The average time it took a home to sell in January was 208 days just slightly higher than last year but significantly higher than the average for the second half of 2008 of about 143 days.

We saw a lot of market stability through most of 2008 in terms of prices, and sales and this changed for the worse late last year due to an overall downturn in the economy and jobs. The question is weather or not we will see some stabilization again this year due to the injection of money from the “Stimulus package” that is due soon.

Lets hope so.

Market Notables

 

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• Single family home sales for the month of December 2008 are down 11% from 2007.

• Year to date sales of single family homes in the area are down 11% from last year.

• The average price per square foot of a home sold in January of 2009 was $149/sf. Down ~2% from a year ago ($152). This is 20% less than the peak in 2005.

• The average number of days it took to sell a home in January of 2009 was 208 days. 2.4% longer than last year which was at 203 days.

• The number of homes on the market in January 2009 was 599 homes. This is about 11% fewer than in 2008.

This data is based on information from the Northern New England Real Estate Network for the periods shown for the towns of Amherst, Bedford, Brookline, Francestown, Greenfield, Greenville, Hollis, Lyndeborough, Mason, Merrimack, Milford, Mont Vernon, Temple, and Wilton.

The data is for the sale of single family homes and exclude condominiums and mobile homes.
This data does not represent all sales. Some sales are not reported through the Multiple Listing Service.

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