September 2009 Summary

Home sales in Lancaster County fell from August levels but did not drop appreciably from numbers posted in recent months, posting 423 in September, the same amount as in September 2007.  The average sales price continued it’s slide from July highs to reach $181,435 in September.  The sustained sales numbers combined with the falling average sold price is likely a result of the push to encourage first time home buyers to take avantage of the expiring $8,000 Federal tax incentive.

Expanded Home Sales Report for September 2009

What’s the latest news on home sales in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania?  If you’re interested, you’ve come to the right place!

The county saw what amounts to a nice month, all things considered.  Home sales rebounded strongly against last year, with many industry pros pointing to the last-minute efforts to encourage first time homebuyers to take advantage of the federal tax “credit” (check in the mail), that is set to expire at the end of November.  More about home sales in the next post…  Other highlights would be the big drop in expiring listings – looks like sellers are hanging in there as school starts.  Average days on market for home sales was up almost 25% and is appoaching 3 months!  Hopefully that trend won’t continue.

Prices…ah, prices.  As you can see the average sold price was down 4% over last year.  Translated, that means that a home that would have sold for $200,000 last September would now sell for $192,000.  One thing’s for sure, prices have not gone up so don’t bother going that route…  The average list price dropped six percent over September 2008.  I think sellers (and agents) are getting the picture and making corrections.

Looking at the historical price chart, we can see that the home sales price (in green) has been sharply on the decline since July.  My “SASP” price (“Seasonally Adjusted Sales Price” – 12 month averaged) has been steadily on the decline as well, down exactly 6% since I started measuring it at the beginning of 2008.  How far will it fall?  Seasonally-Adjusted Listing prices have started trending downwards as well (the Orange line), which is good news in my opinion.  The sooner we get to the bottom, the better.

Lancaster County new residential listings have been on the climb all year from a 3 year low in January 2009.  We’re now back at 2007/2008 levels for September.  This means that sellers are getting off the fence and perhaps some shadow inventory (see my recent post on shadow inventory) is hitting the market.

One last chart – monthly sold homes in Lancaster County have been running at lower levels than previous years but are not tailing off just yet.  As you can see from the chart above, we’re still tracking well (again, this is most likely driven by the lower price ranges affected by the first time buyer push right now).  That also explains the falling average price.

If you have any questions feel free to ask them!