Home Sales Heating Up!

Cache County Home Sales broke the century mark in May for the first time this year. If you don't count the artificially stimulated May sales of 2010, this is also the first time more than a hundred homes have sold during May since 2008.

The 108 residential home sales represent a 32.4% increase from April, and a 13% increase from May of 2012.



All around the country we are seeing the housing market boom. The Salt Lake area is seeing ultra low inventory and double digit price appreciation. Fortunately, Cache Valley has not yet seen the extreme housing shifts being felt along the Wasatch Front. Compared with one year ago, the median price of homes sold during May is up 5.5%. The average sales price is down by almost 2%. One thing preventing rapid price appreciation despite the increase in sales is that real estate inventory in Cache County is also increasing. The supply of newly listed homes for sale is helping to meet the increase in demand. Right now there are 691 residential listings found on the MLS. This is an 6.5% increase from a month ago, and puts us at about the same level we saw in June of last year. While mortage interest rates are still incredibly low, we are starting to see a slight rise in rates which is motivating many potential buyers to begin the house hunting process. It's a great time to buy Cache County real estate.

Cache County August Home Sales Numbers Improved

The good news is that home sales numbers for Cache County Utah during August were substantially improved compared with last month. The bad news is that although the 68 homes sold is an improvement, it is still down nearly 40% compared with last August of last year. This graph shows the comparison of home sales numbers during 2010, compared with the average monthly home sales over the previous five years.



The other good news is that it looks like September home sales will be even better than August home sales. There are more Cache County Homes under contract than there have been in the last two months. We currently have 107 homes under contract compared with just 98 at this time last month.



One interesting thing about the Logan Utah Homes that sold during August is that they were bigger than homes that have sold over the previous four months. The average home that sold was 2,489 square feet, and had an average original list price of $221.767. During April, the average original list price of homes sold was just $176,975, and the average square footage was 2,093 square feet. I think this statistic shows that a much larger percentage of August home sales were made by non first time buyers, whereas, during April the large majority of homes were purchased by first time buyers.

Logan Utah Home Sales for January 2010

Real Estate in Logan Utah was not doing so good during January compared to months previous. During January only 16 homes were sold, whereas, there were 25 homes sold the previous month, December. Although home sales went down since December, they were about the same as January of last year.

Not only have homes sales dropped in Logan but so has the Average Sales Price of the homes being sold. This January the Average Sales Price was around $125,228 which is down from December when it was $130,716. In Logan the amount of homes sold during January was around the same amount as last year but as for the Average Sales Price, that wasn't the case. Last January the Average Sales Price was $172,173. That is around $57,000 more than January of this year.

Other cities in Cache County are experiencing sort of the same decline in home sales. In Providence, Smithfield and Hyrum the number of homes sales is pretty much always in the single digits anyways but there has still been some decline in their home sales.

In Providence, homes sales were barely down from December's home sales but before December home sales were higher with 7 and 9 home sales rather than only having 3 and 4 home sales Like December and January did. But unlike Logan, Providence's Average Sale Price is up more than $4,500 from last January, not down.

In Smithfield and Hyrum Utah, homes sales went down as well. Although both cities already have low home sale numbers anyways, January wasn't any better. Smithfield went from 11 homes sold during December to 6 homes sold during January. Hyrum went from 5 homes sold during December to 0 homes sold the entire month of January.

July Home Sales Down for Cache County

Real Estate in Cache Valley saw a slow down in July compared with June, and year over year sales were down by 27% compared with July of last year.

The good news is that it looks like active inventory may have peaked and is on its way down. There are currently 833 home listings in Cache County including: Logan Utah Real Estate, Providence Utah Real Estate, Smithfield Utah Homes, Hyrum Utah Real Estate, Nibley Utah Real Estate, Hyde Park Utah Real Estate, Richmond Utah Real Estate, Lewiston Utah Real Estate, and the other outlying towns in Cache Valley Utah. At one point during July there were 855 residential listings for sale.

Despite the fact that listings are down, there are still too many for a healthy real estate market. At July's sales pace, Cache County has more than 9 months of inventory.

Prices of Cache Valley Real Estate have also declined. The average price of homes sold during July was $181,135, down 5.77% from July of last year. The median July sold price was $170,500, which is actually the highest single month median this year. The average home sold at $81 per square foot.

Homes less than $160,000 are selling, expensive homes are not.

The number of active listings of homes for sale in Cache County appears to finally be going down. More homes are finally selling than new new listings are being taken. Right now there are 763 active residential listings on the MLS. While the number of listings is dropping, certain price ranges are selling better than others. A good portion of homes currently on the market will not sell this year. Here is a break down of different price ranges comparing the 594 homes that have sold this year with the number of active listings in the same price range.

	Sold Homes		Active Listings
		DOM		DOM
$60,000	1	0	4	49	25%
$70,000	3	43	8	109	38%
$80,000	8	45	7	117	114%
$90,000	21	22	10	103	210%
$100,000	33	55	36	79	92%
$120,000	59	57	33	78	179%
$140,000	105	51	78	77	135%
$160,000	89	55	99	79	90%
$180,000	68	57	84	84	81%
$200,000	97	86	107	97	91%
$250,000	46	97	101	128	46%
$300,000	24	83	61	117	39%
$350,000	17	92	44	158	39%
$400,000	7	80	19	94	37%
$450,000	2	70	16	90	13%
$500,000	6	102	14	101	43%
$600,000	1	23	14	122	7%
$700,000	0		5	108	0%
$800,000			5	59	0%
$900,000			5	96	0%
$1,250,000			2	71	0%
$1,500,000			1	7	0%
$3,000,000			1	420	0%

The price range that sells the best is the $90,000 - $100,000 price range, so most likely older Logan Condos, and older fixer upper houses. There have been more than twice as many homes sold in this price range than current active listings.

The next best selling price range is homes priced between $120,000 and $160,000. There has been a significantly higher number of homes sold in this price range than are currently active.

Homes priced between $160,000 and $200,000 are selling, but there are more active listings in these price ranges than that have sold.

There is a huge surplus of homes priced between $200,000 and $450,000. There is more than twice as many active listings in this price range than homes that have sold in the first half of the year. These active listings have already been on the market for more than 100 days on average.

Homes priced above $450,000 just plain aren't selling in Cache County right now. In the first 202 days of this year there were just 7 homes priced above $450,000 that sold. There are currently 63 listings more expensive than $450,000. People don't "need" to move up to homes this expensive and with all the negative economic news they just aren't selling.