January 2013 Clearwater Real Estate Market Report
This month, after reviewing the most recent statistics, I’m going to tell you how short sales can go when they are done right, and then I’m going to go over some info I’ve been gathering from clients about what they’ve found to be most important in choosing their Realtor.
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Statistics and Graphs
January is typically the lowest month of the year in regards to sales. You’ll see that on the chart below. We’ve been on a very strong trend for a while now and in 2012 we had 12 straight months where sales were higher than the same month in all of the last 5 years. This trend has now continued into 2013. As the chart shows, sales are still going strong and increasing each year.
As a consequence of the lower sales in January and an increase in listings after the holidays (from people wanting to wait until the holidays are over before listing or re-listing), the inventory statistic is typically at its highest point in January. This is true again this January, as you’ll see from the graph below, but each year this is getting lower and this year we are below any point in all of 2011. Despite the increase in January, the inventory shows that we are still in the sellers market range and if we see the kind of decrease in inventory like we saw throughout last year, we will get into a definite shortage problem.
What this means for buyers is that it would be smart to act soon because the decreasing inventory will make it more difficult to find what you want due to less choices and you will be facing increasing prices. For sellers, this means that it will be a good year to list your property, especially before some of the Dodd-Frank rules take effect which may make financing more difficult for buyers.
Information for charts above was taken from PRO/Suncoast MLS from Jan 2007 thru May 2011 & from the MFRMLS for May 2011 thru Jan 2013. This information may or may not include all listed expired, withdrawn, pending or sold properties of one or more members of the My Florida Regional Multiple Listing Service.