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Vince's Northwoods Notes blog is dedicated to providing market statistics, real estate news and listings, and community information relevant to Manitowish Waters and the surrounding communities of Northern Wisconsin.
Time to look at some 1st quarter sales statistics. People want to know “How’s business?”, and rather than just answering “Slow, but even in a good year, sales, especially of waterfront property are slow this time of year”, let’s compare to years past. The following tables show 1st quarter sales in units for all single family homes and all lake homes for a 10 year period, 2000 - 2009, as reflected in the data from our multiple listing service, the Greater Northwoods Multiple Listing Service. One caveat: As of February 1st of the is year we are using two vendors of data services for our MLS. My understanding is that brokerages are supposed to be entering data into both systems, but some refuse to do so and are utilizing only the new system. My problem is that when I submit similar inquiries to both systems, I get different answers, even for dates prior to February 1st -- why, I do not know. So, the units shown in the following tables have a high degree of reliability, but may be off a few units one way or the other. Year | Units, single family homes | List/Sale | 2000 | 195 | 93% | 2001 | 211 | 92% | 2002 | 246 | 93% | 2003 | 275 | 93% | 2004 | 296 | 93% | 2005 | 263 | 94% | 2006 | 312 | 94% | 2007 | 290 | 93% | 2008 | 202 | 89% | 2009 | 160 | 90% |
As you can see, sales in units, while down considerably from peaking in 2006 (remember, we are only looking at 1st quarter here), have not withered completely away. Take from that what you will. I also find it interesting that the list-to-sale ratio (actually, that should be reversed, if you want to be a stickler, mathematically) actually peaked in 2005 and 2006 when list prices where also at their peak. Let’s next just look at 1st quarter lake home sales. The same caveat as above applies, but I add a second one. Some homes that get entered into the lake home category, well, let’s just say that sometimes it is a stretch to say that there is a lake involved. But there is no sensible method for anyone to refine the data, so we work with what we have. Year | Units, single family lake homes | Median sale price | Average sale price | 2000 | 83 | $199,900 | $196,099 | 2001 | 70 | $200,000 | $236,958 | 2002 | 92 | $187,200 | $228,743 | 2003 | 96 | $220,000 | $241,757 | 2004 | 100 | $232,500 | $289,317 | 2005 | 92 | $288,500 | $294,099 | 2006 | 98 | $260,000 | $312,525 | 2007 | 95 | $271,000 | $314,461 | 2008 | 53 | $307,000 | $404,664 | 2009 | 31* | $288,000* | $337,896* |
*Incomplete data due to the fact that not all 1st Q sales were entered inn the old MLS vendor’s system and there does not appear to be a way to get this data from the new vendor’s system. Actual 1st Q lake home sales were almost certainly larger than 31 units. As you can see, unit sales held up pretty well in this category thru 2007 after peaking in 2004. Note that median and average sale price of lake front homes continued to climb through 2008. You should also note that as the unit number decreases, the effect of outliers on the average and median price increases, possibly skewing the results. I hope that you find these statistics useful, or at least interesting. Be sure to contact me if you have any questions.
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About Vince Hoehn
REALTOR associate at CENTURY 21 Pierce Realty of Mercer and Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin.
(715) 543-2384 / (800) 440-7879
vince@c21piercerealty.com
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