Hello Fort Hunters!  Hope you are enjoying all the fantastic summer fun our communities, neighbors, and volunteers supply: swim and tennis teams, neighborhood pools, camps, boating, walking, running or biking along or on the river, no school and hopefully the ability to enjoy a slower pace of life. Yeah summer!

We are so fortunate to be able to boast about a great May 2012 real estate wise. We truly had a very strong May and the entire spring selling season in general was fantastic.

The chart highlights our sales volume and closed sales, both up substantially month over month and year over year.  Median sold prices held basically steady and the average sales steady month over month and down 10 percent year over year. In our zip code, the varying price points from the $400s to well over multi-million dollar homes will impact those numbers, so this is not concerning to us.

Homes, priced well, are going under contract quickly.   Average days on market are 21 days.  That is a big improvement, and indicates that our current inventory is lean, and that buyers are buying quickly.

Attached is snapshot of the last 5 months of  May, and you can see that we are doing well. We are on track with 2010 and a having a really strong May in comparison to sales activity from other recent years.

Below please find a comparison of May 2012 to May 2011. We are almost 27 percent higher in sales volume, and have 42 percent more units sold this year as compared to last.  Look at the difference in days on market…which is fairly remarkable.  We are down 76% for the amount of time it takes to sell a home!  Although nominal, the average sold price compared to original sales price, is up as well. 

Lastly, the chart below illustrates analysis of our current inventory situation.  We have 40% fewer houses on the market than this same time last year.  That is significant.  This speaks to the time on the market coming down dramatically, as there are fewer houses to buy.

Another factor that is contributing to our strong numbers is the lower interest rates that banks are currently offering.  Over the life of a loan, the savings on purchasing a house in today’s lending environment is literally hundred of thousands of dollars when buyers take advantage of our current phenomenal and historically low interest rates.

Thank you for stopping by to check in on our local real estate market.

We would love to hear from you with questions or comments.

Have a wonderful July 4^th!

Happy Buying and Selling!

Lyssa Seward and Jane Cole

Lseward@cbmove.com   Jcole@cbmove.com

Market statistics courtesy of RBI.