Wednesday, February 08, 2012

A Good Start in January

Westport had 7 more properties going to contract in January 2012 than it did the previous year, representing an increase of 35%. At the same time there was a 12% increase in the number of sales in January, representing activity towards the end of 2011.

In an odd twist there was a 34.2% increase of new properties entering the market, while the month’s of inventory of homes on the market actually dipped 35.6%. Month’s of inventory represents the number of months that it theoretically will take to sell off the current inventory based upon the number of sales in the previous year. There are currently 278 single family homes on the market.

Another way of looking at the situation is to say that there is a lack of ‘quality’ inventory, especially in the middle to lower end of the market. On the higher end of market (over $2,000,000) there are currently 105 listings. Based on sales over $2million in 2011 (53), this represents approximately 2 years of inventory. Otherwise said, it will theoretically take 2 years to sell of the current inventory of homes listed at over $2 million.

On the lower end, to get a sense of comparison, there are currently only 30 homes listed up to $700,000. 2011 sales of homes below this figure totaled 78. This means that based on current homes listed for sale, there are only about 4.6 month’s worth of inventory below $700,000.