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June 2006 BloodhoundRealty.com
Market-Basket of Homes: Values up 0.33%

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Home values were up slightly, by 0.33%, in the June 2006 BloodhoundRealty.com Market-Basket of Homes. Average sales prices were up $851, from 257,148 in May to 257,999 in June. Nevertheless, values are down $11,876 from the December 2005 high of $269,875. Market-Basket homes spent an average of 69 days on market, one day less than in May.

As has been the case in recent months, most Market-Basket homes are selling at or above list price. A few deeply-discounted properties pulled down the average, and average discounting netted out to 1.75%, up from 1.31% in May.

A total of 176 Market-Basket homes were sold in June, down from 211 in May. Inventories of available homes continue to climb. There are now 1,525 homes available for sale in the Market-Basket, which would imply an absorption rate of over eight months. A six-month absorption rate is considered normal.

Based on the idea of the Consumer Price Index market-basket of goods and services, the Market-Basket of Homes uses average sales prices for a small subset of all Valley home sales to get a clearer idea of what is happening in the middle of the bell curve. The alternative method, striking a median among all closed transactions, introduces too many extraneous factors to provide a reliable indicator of what is happening to prices for those homes that are most avidly desired by the greatest number of people. To that end, the Market-Basket of Homes looks at sales prices for MLS-listed suburban homes from 1300sf to 1900sf built in 1998 or later, the homes that drive the resale market.

The BloodhoundRealty.com Market-Basket of Homes is updated monthly and is always available at http://www.BloodhoundRealty.com/MarketBasket.pdf