Perrysburg Blog

You know, stats / statistics are dangerous things.

Easily manipulated.

Slice the data in the time frame/price range/criteria you want . . . and you can make it say “BLUE”.  Do it in the way I want and I can make the same data say “RED”.

Very dangerous.  Deceptive.  At least that’s what my statistics teacher at Duke told us before he taught!

N.A.R.  (the National Association of REALTORS) comes out with some stats.   Sales are UP in the past month!!!  Yeah!!!

But comparing one month against another . . .

When you know that the current months’ “bump” is solely due to depressed REO assets selling . . .

When many local markets are cratering . . .

Highly dubious.  Almost deceptive.  Even though technically true.

But what of the big, national statistical picture?   Can we look at ALL the numbers?  What will that tell us????

Here is the picture:

National numbers are both up 4.7% but they are also down by 41.1% over the past year.

There is no honest way to say that sales are up.

The days of a million or 1.2 million homes selling per year in the USA?  Gone.  For a long time.

Pricing and your homes’ pricing strategy are all important in this market.

In Perrysburg and everywhere else apparently.

Well, that was fun.

If you were a buyer!

Median Prices in Perrysburg:

12/2008

Median Price, Active Listings – $199,900

Median Price, Pending Listings – $175,000

Median Price, Closed Sales – $180,000

409 Single Family and Condo Properties on the Market

29 Pending in Dec.

23 Closed in Dec.

11.4 months of inventory remains on the market as of 12/31/2008

Residual Inventory DOWN to 288 vs. 356 on 12/31/2006.

My comments:

More and more sellers are quiting.   Just taking their houses off the market.   Many are renting.  Some are short – selling.  Some are being foreclosed.

Many sellers are actually SELLING.

Amazing but true!   You have to have some equity and a plan (and a good agent – but I digress!) and a healthy respect for current market conditions.

Here is the chart – what is the truth?   The chart tells the truth.

If you are focused like a laser beam on Perrysburg, which I am trained to be when I have to (which is when I am listing and selling and consulting on Perrysburg real estate and for Perrysburg real estate clients, although this was a typical day in that I had to list a house in Toledo, list a house in Rossford, secure/list a house in Holland for a bank, and then list a house in Perrysburg all while my team was showing houses in and around Maumee, Perrysburg, and Toledo . . . but I digress)

IF you are focused on Perrysburg the number that arrests your attention today is -9%.

Because the Toledo Blade ran a story yesterday (www.ToledoBlade.com) about housing values in Toledo being off by 5.2%.

I was quoted in the story by John Chavez, the Blade’s excellent Business reporter.

But, you know, when you are quoted, you can never really get the whole story out.   John was working with the national numbers that the National Association of Realtors was using in a press release for all of Ohio.

But there is no “Ohio” real estate market.

If I had my own place to write – Oh, I do, right here! – I would say that ALL real estate is local.   All of the big national statistics have to be brought right down to the local level.

You want the truth about the Perrysburg market?  Then you had better use the right metrics and numbers and data to get it.

And the numbers have indeed flattened out – but if you look back to just one year ago, which is a time frame that most of us are very comfortable using, the median price in Perrysburg of sold homes is down by -9%.

$197,500 in July of 2007 to $179,750 in July of 2008.

That’s a BIG drop.

Are we done?  I don’t think we are going to see another $17,750 drop in Perrysburg over the next 12 months.

I do not see it.

Not in Perrysburg.

You can track what is happening with homes on the market anytime you want by looking at www.OnlyPerrysburg.com (shameless plug – it’s one of my websites, a pretty neat one I think – one button gets you every house for sale in Perrysburg!).

What will our market look like in July 2009 if it drops another 9 or 10%?

You and I most likely don’t want to know . . .