Snapshot of 4th Quarter Tallahassee Residential Real Estate Market Statistics

Just pulled the 4th quarter Year over year residential real estate market statistics for Tallahassee and it's looking pretty good.  In a nutshell, prices are up a good bit, sales are way up, number of listing inventory is slightly down, properties are selling closer to what they are listed for sale at, and properties are selling quicker. Finally, the number of distressed sales (foreclosures and short sales), expressed as a percentage of total sales, is down.  If this trend continues, it's looking like it will be a good year for residential real estate in Tallahassee.  For quite a while, the fundamentals of the real estate market here in Tallahassee have been getting better.  Supply of properties has been coming down for a couple years now, and the number of properties selling has also been increasing for a couple years now.  However, the impact of foreclosure and short sales have caused prices to stay down.  Until now that is.  For the first time in a while, the number of foreclosures and short sales expressed as a percentage of total sales, has come down.  At the same time ( and I don't think this is a coincidence) home prices have come up in a big way posting an 8.8% year over year increase in the 4th quarter of 2012. Since this is the first quarter I have seen since the boom years of the mid 2000's where we have had a large year over year increase in prices like this, I think it could be too soon to say our real estate market has turned the corner completely.  However, if we have another quarter or two like this, I think we can say our real estate market here in Tallahassee is back to a much healthier condition.   The snapshot of the statistics are below for the 4th quarter are below.

8.8% Year over year increase in average sales price ($178,485)

37.2% increase in the number of overall properties sold (667)

2.3% decrease in the number of properties listed for sale (799)

0.49% increase in the overall sale price/listing price ratio (94.95%)

Average days it took a property to sell decreased 3% (142 days)

83.48% of the properties listed sold in the 4th quarter of 2012. Up from 59.49% a year earlier.

Foreclosures and short sales in 4th quarter of 2012 made up 23.2% of total sales down from 25.7% of total sales a year earlier.