'Tis the Season for Stable Home Prices

Jonathan Miller, the "housing market analyst guy" that RBI and MRIS have tapped for market analysis services, provided the market commentary for our November 2010 Housing Market Stats press release (leveraging rbiPRO, of course). Jonathan was named “Best Online Real Estate Expert" by Money Magazine and appears in publications such as the Wall Street Journal and NY Times covering national and regional housing issues. Needless to say, we're thrilled to have him join our team!  Merry reading...

RBI Released November 2010 Housing Market Stats Today

The monthly housing data released by RBI today shows an encouraging pattern of stability in home pricing while a downward trend is emerging in sales activity.  The median price of a home in the Baltimore Washington metro area has remained constant over the last three months indicating overall strength in the regional housing market. And while housing is hyper-local, and each area is seeing its own fluctuation, I’m still seeing this as a region-wide trend.

 In reviewing this new data, I am seeing a couple interesting data points for the region:

• Sales experienced a seasonal decline of 1.9% from 7,059 sales in October 2010 — well below the 15.7% seasonal average month over month decline of the past five years. This an encouraging pattern of stability.
• Baltimore Washington metro area November median sales price remained flat at $265,000, unchanged from October 2010 and 4.7% higher than $253,000 in November 2009.

• Days on the Market (DOM) expanded by 4 days to 91 days last month as the listing discount decreased amidst a 2.8% decline in active listing inventory and an 18% drop in new listings.

Here is an audio analysis of the RBI data.

 In addition to region-wide trends, here are what local communities are seeing:

• Washington, DC:  Median prices are up from last year to $427,750 and average DOM is down from 72 to 60.
• Howard County, MD: Median prices are up from last year to $350,000 and average DOM is down from 90 to 85.
• Saint Mary’s County, MD: Median prices are up from last year to $276,912.50 and average DOM is down from 131 to 120.
• Arlington County, VA: Median prices are up from last year to half a million but average DOM is up to 70 from 53.
• Fairfax County, VA: Median prices are up from last year to $375,000 but average DOM is up to 62 from 48.
• Loudon County, VA: Median prices are up from last year to $367,950 but average DOM is up to 63 from 47.

 For a full report on all jurisdictions in the MRIS region, check out www.rbintel.com/statistics.