City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County Real Estate Updates: January - October 2011

Jim at RealCentralVA has two posts aggregating the data for year to date.  The pending, solds, and listing data is for all property types (single family, condo, townhouse) aggregated.  Individual types and micro-markets show varied data and strengths and weaknesses, but this is a good overview.

One thing that Jim is no longer doing: comparing current data to bubble-era data--and with very good reasons: it was interesting, curious, anomalous but ultimately irrelevant.  If you need a house right now, you need a house.

However, this blog will continue to do so because that's what bubble blogs do, and for these reasons:

• Many of those bubble-era buyers made the purchase with the expectation that they'd be selling now.
• A number of bubble-era buyers are going to face foreclosure or short sales in 2012.
• It is many of the bubble-era buyers, now sellers, who still have inflated asking prices because they need to get back the bubble-era value of the house during a sale. Or they actually believe the house has appreciated since they bought it (the "exception to the rule" idea of homeownership).
• There are fewer buyers now but more homes.  More coming on the market due to Boomer Retirement.  And more new homes are being built--because that's what many current buyers want, since they know they will be staying 6-10 years.
• The volume of transactions during the peak of bubble era (roughly 1999-2008) was higher than it will ever be for the next decade.   
• Prices during the peak of bubble era were higher than they will be for the next decade (except in the occasional micro-market). 

(Yes, the last two bullets points are fairly serious predictions.)

See Albemarle County Data.  See City of Charlottesville Data.