May’s statistics signify an upward trend for the Hampton Roads real estate market as residential settled sales and under contracts increase year-over-year. Active listings drop double digit percentages leading to a lower month’s supply inventory. Distressed homes account for fewer residential active listings and settled sales.
The amount of homes for sale dropped 18% compared to May of 2011. Each of the major seven cities experienced double digit percentage declines in the number of homes for sale. Chesapeake and Virginia Beach experienced the biggest year-over-year dips at 23% and 22% respectively. The remaining major cities, with the exception of Suffolk, dropped at least 17%.
This drop in active listings for sale led to a low 7.6 months supply of inventory for the region, the lowest it’s been since tracking began in January 2009.
(A balanced market is considered to be six months of inventory)
Pending home sales continue along a positive trend that has been ongoing for 13 months, with an increase of 18.18% over the same period in 2011. Hampton and Chesapeake displayed the largest year-over-year increases at 36% and 26.44% respectively. Newport News was the region’s only major city not to experience an increase in under contracts, with a drop of 4.82% when compared to May of last year.
Closed sales for the region climbed 9.77% when compared to May 2011. Norfolk and Hampton saw the largest increases in year-over-year closed sales at 21.13% and 19.66% respectively. Suffolk and Portsmouth did not experience increases from last year’s numbers during the same time, rather they dropped 12.5% and 5.56% respectively.
The median sales price for the region’s residential settled sales was $202,500, a 5.2% increase from May 2011’s median sales price of 192,475.
Distressed homes comprised just 26.26% of all residential settled sales. This is the lowest percentage of distressed homes in the residential settled sales composition since August of 2010 when the percentage was 25.38%.
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Stats for other Virginia Markets May 2012 The housing markets in three Virginia metro areas followed national trends toward gradual improvement in May. The National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday that median list prices for homes in Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads and Richmond rose in May when compared to the same month last year. At the same time, total listings in each of these markets fell by more than 15 percent. In Northern Virginia, the median list price was $399,900 in May, up 8 percent, while total listings were down 15.7 percent to 13,441. In Richmond, the median price was $209,000, up 4.5 percent and total listings decreased 27.2 percent to 5,830. Meanwhile in Roanoke, median list prices were down slightly in May (off 1.19 percent to $177,750) but total listings declined 16.7 percent to 1,772.
This post was authored by local resident and REALTOR, John Womeldorf. John is known around town as Mr. Williamsburg, for both his extensive knowledge of the Williamsburg/ Hampton Roads area and and his expertise in the local real estate market. His websites, WilliamsburgsRealEstate.com and Mr Williamsburg.com were created as a resource for folks who are exploring a move to Williamsburg, VA , Hampton Roads VA and the surrounding areas of the Virginia Peninsula. Here you can search homes for sale , active adult communities, 55+ communities, condos and townhomes , foreclosures/ REO, land, building lots, commercial property in Williamsburg , Yorktown, New Kent, Gloucester, Poquoson as well as the surrounding areas of Hampton Roads, Virginia I look forward to serving your real estate needs! Best, John |
psst … I’m a Realtor! Thanks for stopping by my website. I would love to help you find your dream home and community in the Hampton Roads or Williamsburg areas of Virginia or to sell your existing home.Filed under: hampton roads, real estate
