The first quarter 2013 saw median prices continue their upward trend, with single family homes climbing 19.45% and condo prices climbing 14.16%. This data is especially good news for condo owners, who have until recently watched as single family home prices have recovered and condo prices continued to decline. Driving the recovery in the condominium market were strong sales, which increased over 27%, to 317 sales in the quarter. On the other hand single family home sales were pretty much flat, showing just a marginal improvement of 1.22% to 2,238 sales.
So why are prices climbing while the number of sales seems to have reached a plateau. Well it’s all about supply and demand. Take a look at the table below which shows the 1st quarter single family home new listings and median number of those new listings sold since 2006. We can see that the number of new listings has declined from a peak of 6,553 in 2008 to a low of 3,453 in the last quarter. That’s a drop of nearly 50% from its peak. While the number of new listings continued to decline, the number of those listings selling has climbed steadily over the same period, going from a low of 27.67% in 2008 to 64.81% in the last quarter (a level even higher than that seen in the height of the real estate boom). In short there are so few homes on the market that buyers are facing tough competition from other buyers, thus driving up median home prices.
Single Family Homes
| Year | New Listings | Median Sold |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 5163 | 61.30% |
| 2007 | 5273 | 48.57% |
| 2008 | 6553 | 27.67% |
| 2009 | 4978 | 28.63% |
| 2010 | 5171 | 34.83% |
| 2011 | 4226 | 42.81% |
| 2012 | 3736 | 59.18% |
| 2013 | 3453 | 64.81% |
If we look at the same data but for condos we can see a similar picture, but the trend seems to be about 2 years behind that of single family homes. This is one of the reasons why condo median prices have been slower to recover.
Condos
| Year | New Listings | Median Sold |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 729 | 72.02% |
| 2007 | 676 | 61.69% |
| 2008 | 863 | 33.02% |
| 2009 | 672 | 30.36% |
| 2010 | 838 | 24.46% |
| 2011 | 595 | 35.97% |
| 2012 | 533 | 46.53% |
| 2013 | 571 | 55.52% |
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