The problem with real estate statistics is that by the time you get the data, the news is old. The market has changed, and more importantly, the season it covers has passed.
The best reports tend to be quarterly because those reports show trends more than the monthly reports, which can over-emphasize blips or anomalies in the market. But, again, the problem with quarter reports is that by the time you get them, the market may have shifted significantly.
The shift from a winter market to a spring one tends to be the most dramatic of them all.
Take, for example, the quarter one reports for 2009, which I dutifully posted on my blog a couple weeks ago (see post below). They paint the picture of an extraordinarily slow market with desperate sellers. And, that is how the market was in January, February and March. But, in April, as sellers dramatically cut their prices and interest rates hit record lows, buyers were out in droves.
My colleagues and I were finding ourselves in dual offers, quickly selling homes, a fast-paced market, and high sale-to-list ratios. This was not a complete turn-around or complete recovery, but it was radically different from the snail’s pace of a market we had in February.
Now, watch, just as the market slows down a little for the summer, the quarter two reports will come out and confuse everyone all over again. See the article on the dramatic rise in home sales in April just posted by yahoo this morning.
Does this mean real estate statistics are useless? I don’t think so; they provide an excellent sense of context and give you a larger sense of what is going on in your local market. For example, current stats show that prices are significantly lower than they have been over the last few years, and that is important information that tends to shift more slowly.
I will continue to post our local stats and keep our “Local Stats” category (in the right margin) updated. But, keep in mind that the current word on the street is often just as important and sometimes more important than the old news in the media.
