Date Archives June 2011

Showing Houses in Charlottesville – On a Bike

Well that was fun. Saturday, I showed a few houses to buyer clients. And we each rode our bicycles; and I’m looking forward to doing it again. April was my first time showing a house on a bike and I’d been looking forward to doing it again. As this was my first time showing multiple houses with clients, I learned a few things.

If being closer to bike paths equates to higher property values, what better way to experience bike paths and on a bike?

Notes/lessons learned:

– Riding a bicycle is an infinitely better way to learn a neighborhood than riding in a car – taking in the smells (think Belmont BBQ), the sounds (trains in Charlottesville), topography (if you’re planning on commuting via bike).

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Charlottesville MSA Median Prices 2000 through 2011

Bear with me … I’m trying to make sense of the market.

Continuing my theme of looking at the Charlottesville real estate market data from a longer point of view, lest we track the housing market too closely

It seems that we’re back (broadly) at 2004 – 2005 housing prices in Charlottesville.

Single family home median prices for Charlottesville MSA:

Median Sales Prices - Single Famliy Homes - 1st 5 Months - Charlottesville MSA

Attached home median prices for Charlottesville MSA:

Attached - Median Sales Price

I left off Greene and Louisa as they have negligible attached home inventories.

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Seeking a Stable, Consistent Volume of Real Estate Transactions in Charlottesville

I look at too much data. I admit it. In this post, I’m posing just a question – when looking at the past ten years of real estate data** in the Charlottesville, Virginia area, what is a “normal” level of real estate transactions and is there a correlation between transactions and population growth? And how can my buyer and seller clients (and readers) apply this knowledge?

My hypothesis is that once we achieve a stable, consistent volume of real estate transactions – equilibrium if you will – we’ll be able to definitively say that we reached “bottom” or “stagnation” and start to consider such things as “appreciation of real estate values.”

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