Cache County Residential Land - Far From Recovery

While the housing market in Cache County is doing pretty well, Cache County Land is far from recovery. For residential lots of less than an acre, we're looking at more than three YEARS of active inventory. The prices of these Cache County lots still need to come down in price by about 15-30%. Here is a break down of Cache County Land Sales Number and prices for lots less than an acre.

Lot's Less Than .25 Acres

Lots smaller than a quarter acre are rarely sold individually. Neighborhoods with smaller lots are generally owned buy builders and developers. But, for the few lots that actually did sell last year, this was one of the bright spots. Nine smaller lots sold last year, and there are less than seven currently for sale. That's less than a years worth of inventory!

Prices of the Lots for Sale are also doing well. As you can see from the graph below, the list price of the current Cache County Properties for sale is about par, or even less than the average sold price the last three years.

Lots Between .26-.5 Acres

Now this is where it starts to get ugly. There are currently 113 residential lots for sale in Cache County. Only 34 properties in this range sold last year. That is nearly 40 months of inventory. Not only is there a huge surplus of these types of lots for sale, but the average price of the active listings is $22,00 higher than the average sold price last year. The most ridiculous thing is that these list prices are still higher than lots of this size have EVER sold for. Sellers need to face reality and substantially lower their prices.

Lots Between .5-.74 Acres

Between half an acre and .74 acres there are 55 lots for sale. Last year, only 8 sold. That is 132 months of active inventory. The median list price of these type of lots is $33,000 higher than the median price of the ones that sold last year.

Lots Between .75-.99 Acres

The larger lots less than an acre are also struggling. Only five of these properties sold last year. There are 28 properties currently for sale. The average list price of these properties is higher than they have ever sold before. The current median list price is $169,000. Four lots sold in 2009 and these lots had a median sales price of $76,000.

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Logan Short Sale Numbers Constant

The number of short sale homes in Logan Utah has remained pretty constant over the last four months. Currently Cache County has 47 homes for sale that require "short sale" bank approval. This is the same amount of short sale homes as were on the market last month.

Percentage wise, the number of short sales is actually up slightly as there are now less total homes for sale. Last month there were 738 total residential MLS listings, this month there are just 720. Logan City itself has 13 short sale homes, the remaining cities in account for 38 Cache County short sales.

Number of Homes for Sale in Logan Rising Quickly

I just ran a quick check of the number of homes for sale in Cache County, and was astonished to see that in just a week, the number of Logan Real Estate inventory had risen by nearly 5%. Exactly one week ago, Cache County had 687 residential real estate listings. Right now there are 720.

Last year we didn't hit inventory levels this high until the March when the Spring listing season typically hits. March and April are typically big months for listing homes for sale.

Some of the increase in inventory can be attributed to the $6,500 move up tax credit. People want to sell by April so they can get the government money when they buy their new homes. However, this sharp spike in the number of homes for sale in Logan is alarming. Home prices will continue to decline as long as there are more homes on the market than there are buyers. At last years pace of home sales, we have more than 9 months of Cache County real estate inventory right now.

2009 Home Sales in Cache County Down 9%

While the last quarter of the year saw improvements in home sales in Cache County, overall 2009 real estate sales were substantially down compared with 2008.

For MLS listed homes, there were just 979 Cache County Homes sold, down 9% from the 1073 homes sold in 2008. Compared with 2007, when 1295 residential homes in Cache County Sold, home sales were down almost 25%. This is the lowest year of total home sales since 2003.

Prices of homes sold were down by 4.78%. This doesn't necessarily mean that all Cache County Real Estate depreciated 5%, but it does tell us that the homes that sold were less expensive. In all reality starter homes just slightly depreciated, and more expensive homes likely depreciated in value much more than 4.98%.

It will be interesting to see what happens with real estate sales in 2010. Many economists are predicting that Utah Real Estate will have bottomed out by the end of the summer.

Logan Utah Real Estate December Numbers

Logan Utah Real Estate sales during December were almost identical to a year ago. From the MLS Listings sold during December, there has been reported one more home sold, and the average and median prices of homes sold was just slightly down.

December of 2009 had 62 residential homes in Logan listed on the MLS sell. These homes had a median sales price of exactly $150,000 and an average price of $172,734.

At this time last year, there were 61 Logan UT Real Estate listings reported as sold. These homes had a median price of $151,840, and an average price at $161,499. The average price is almost $10,000 higher this year, in large part because there were two Cache Valley Homes priced above $450,000 that sold in 2009, while there weren't any homes that expensive that sold last year.

There are currently 693 homes for Sale in Cache County Utah. This is the lowest level of inventory since February. There are 9 more homes on the market right now than there were a year ago. At December's home sales pace, Cache Valley has 11.24 months of inventory. Until this goes down home prices will remain soft.

December is the first month in quite some time that is mostly unaffected by stimulus. Although the government tax credits were extended, and still in effect, they were late enough that there were likely very few closings during December that were a direct result of the new $6,500 tax credit.

If this is any indication of future home sales for Cache County, statistically we can expect a similar year for real estate in Cache Valley.

Q4 Cache County Home Sales up 16%

Home Sales in Cache County were up by 16% compared with the fourth quarter of 2008. So far, the there have been 249 Cache County Homes that have reported as sold on the MLS. These home sales numbers are very comparable with the fourth quarter of 2007 when the housing crisis in Logan really began.

While home sales were up compared with last year, the median and average price of Cache County Real Estate was substantially down. It was the lowest fourth quarter levels in four years actually. The median home sales price was $154,800, down 7.36% from the median sales price during Q4 of 2008. The average sold price of Cache County Homes was $170,743, down 4.82% from the average 2008 price of $179,743.