Have home prices stabilized in your neighborhood? Where are home values trending? A reasonable question every home owner wants to know! Understanding what drives the residential real estate market on the Gold Coast of Long Island is as simple as predicting the direction stock prices will head on any given day. Fundamentally, everyone from the financial experts to the day trader in the next office over actively tracks any number of economic indicators including CPI, GDP, unemployment, new & existing home sales, construction spending and an excess of other trends and statistics. In residential real estate, we closely monitor similar indicators searching for the depth and breadth of the market; however, our market indicators include those mentioned above plus inventory levels for listings, contracts, and sales as well as days on market, inventory versus contract supply and of course prices – new, contracts, price improvements and closed.
What Do You Do Now? Now that we are thinking like realtors, what does all of this really mean? Don’t you as a seller or a buyer want to know what the house next door, around the corner or across town sold for in TODAY’s market? Isn’t your endgame as a buyer or a seller to be able to strike the best deal possible? Of course, but that’s not the end of the story. With all of these numbers floating around out there, what should you really be monitoring? With the LuxuryLongIsland.com market activity reports, you can follow the trends and patterns in your local community with a simple subscription – at absolutely no cost to you!
Get In the Know with Local Market Reports Market insights and trends in a robust dynamic report all at your fingertips – what a concept! The report is delivered monthly to your email complete with all the charts and graphs showing live broad market activity. The Reports also provide the capacity to search similar homes for comparison purposes. Statistics comprise sold homes, properties for sale, inventory counts, the number of days homes have been on the market, inventory levels, property features and much more. But that’s not all. Bonus features include school and community data, local shopping, police, fire and other key community locations.
In case you’re not convinced Just like in economics, there are a few key real estate market indicators that we as Realtors monitor. It’s a combination of prior sales (past or lagging), new listings to market (current or coincident) contract prices & price improvements (future or leading). Surely, there a many more but this is the starting point, if you will! Think of the indicators in a timeline format. That will help you to put it into perspective.
a) Prior Sales (past) – it typically takes 90-120 days for a sale to reflect in the market. Any data collected and published is already three to four months old
b) New Listings to market (coincident) – while this should be considered a leading indicator, a measure of simple supply and demand, in actuality it is based more on the emotional and in many cases financial sentiment of sellers. It is not based on the potential appetite of buyers actively engaged in the home search.
c) Contract Prices & Price Improvements (leading) – this is market action now. The bellwether benchmark based upon what is happening today or at least those homes that have gone into escrow.
Clearly, this is the basic version of what we monitor in your town and neighborhood. In today’s complex economy, it’s not extremely important to be ‘in the know’ at all times. With our Real Estate Market Reports, you can easily follow trends and statistics in the hyperlocal residential market from the comfort of your own home or office! Of course, when you are ready to ask a few questions, request a confidential market appraisal, or place a property on the market, you can contact me and we can take the next steps together.