Northwest Arkansas Home Prices and Market Report – April 2009
May 4th, 2009 categories: Market Conditions
April Buyers bring May closings! If last month’s Northwest Arkansas Home Prices and Market Report was uplifting…this month’s Market Report should have you singing in the rain. While prices in Northwest Arkansas are nowhere near their highs of several years ago, there is a definite bullish trend in prices, absorption rates, and pending and closed inventory that should make buyers get out and ‘get while the gettin’s still good.’ National buyer confidence for house is trending upward and the trend supports the numbers in this month’s Residential Real Estate Market Report for Northwest Arkansas.
Northwest Arkansas Home Prices and Housing Market Report
While the average home sale price did dip a bit from last month…I stand firm that the shift to higher home prices has begun. Many of the sales closed this month were foreclosure inventory coming off the market and so drove the average sales price of homes in Northwest Arkansas down some this month. I fully expect May numbers to show an inclrease in sale prices over April. Pending home sales remain strong this month over the last few showing that buyers are buyer and and sellers are selling…now that’s a magical equation. Just to recap, February had 526 pendings, March had 1092, April had 843. Compare this month to all my monthly market reports here.
Here are the running average home prices in Northwest Arkansas
As you can see…the average sales price for homes that closed in April fell a bit from March, but this is mostly due to the high ratio of foreclosure sales to standard or owner-occupied sales.
April Numbers by City
Here are the April number broken down by major city. It has been pointed out to me recently that, when added together, these numbers don’t equal the numbers for all of Northwest Arkansas. This is because the numbers below are just for the cities involved…rural, outlying areas, and smaller satellite cities change the figures when put into the greater Northwest Arkansas equation.
As usual, number gurus can cross reference the numbers above with past months numbers to see the nitty gritty details. For the rest of us, here are the graphs.
Northwest Arkansas Pendings, Solds, and Expireds by Month for 2009
Sales up, pendings down a bit but still up, and expireds down…pretty good news for sellers.
Current Inventories in each Northwest Arkansas City by Month
Not to much we can deduce here except that inventory levels will probably remain stable as both supply and demand increase over the next few months.
Average Days on Market by City
Every city went down from last month except Bella Vista and Springdale. I expect the days on Market to stay relatively level for the next few months as more homes come on the market and homes that have been on the market for a long time finally sell off.
Absorption Rates by Price Range
I think this is one of the best (and most telling) signs of a recovery. As absorption rates fall by leaps and bounds we see a healthy market come back into focus. Based on these number I would say the bottom of the market was in February 2009. Certain neighborhoods and price ranges obviously differ, but everything points to the bottom being in February. As absorption rates fall you will see prices stabilize more and demand creep back up to the level of supply.
Have a statistic that you want to see in the Report? Need a little more explanation? Would you like this information in pdf or word document form? Contact us and let us know or leave a comment below. Thanks for reading and we’ll see you back here next month for the Residential Real Estate Market Report for Northwest Arkansas.
