This latest edition of the weekly Oroville home sales roundup shows that the Lake Oroville real estate market may finally be normalizing.
Price stabilization seems to be taking hold as monthly median prices have barely moved over the past 12 months. Between April 1, 2014 and March 31, 2015 the median Oroville area home price (the midpoint price of all homes sold) was $145,000. During this time, the highest monthly median price was September 2014 at $159,000 and the lowest price being recorded this March at $128,895. In addition, March was the first month since May 2013 that the monthly median price was lower in the current year than it was in the same month of the previous year.
There are two things that you should be watching very closely if you are trying to gauge the health of the Oroville real estate market. One of those things is the number of current home sales pending (or in Realtor-speak, “in escrow”, and the other is the inventory of Lake Oroville homes currently on the market. You can see that over the past three weeks both the number of pending sales and the number of homes currently on the market are steadily increasing. While this is encouraging news, there is still a ways to go. It has been my opinion for quite some time that an adequate supply of homes for sale should be at, or close to, 300 and that the number of pending home sales should be in the neighborhood of 130-140. As you can see, we are significantly short of those benchmarks, but we appear to be making some inroads to a healthier market.
If you have been a frequent follower of my market reports you will notice a couple of changes to chart. One change is that I will no longer be reporting the number of foreclosures and short sale homes that are currently on the market. These homes are no longer having any significant impact on the local market so I will not bother you with irrelevant information. The other change I have made is the addition of my tracking the number of agents from outside the local Oroville market that are doing business here. In my opinion, this is a disturbing trend as some of these agents from outside the area have absolutely no expertise in assisting buyers or seller in the Oroville real estate market. I’ll continue to monitor this and keep you apprised of the situation. Be sure to leave any comments you may have about this post. I always appreciate the feedback.
The post Weekly Oroville Home Sales Roundup appeared first on Mark Wisterman's Oroville, Chico & Paradise Real Estate Blog.
