Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Look at the trend of Novembers past:

When I read the headline in the Washington Post this morning about plunging real estate sales in November, I decided to do some research. I looked at sales in November in zip code 20009 in the District of Columbia going back to 1995. I looked at the number of homes sold in that month in each year between 1995 and 2008. I wanted to get a sense of what "normal" might be for this very specific geographic location. In future posts, I will look at other zip codes and do the same thing to give us a sense of where we are on a continuum. Here is what I found for zip 20009:

Number of homes sold in November
1995: 39
1996: 35
1997: 52
1998: 56
1999: 88
2000: 74
2001: 77
2002: 90
2003: 89
2004: 116
2005: 89
2006: 76
2007: 64
2008: 39

It would appear, based on the 14-year trend represented by this data, that we could be at the low point for numbers of homes sold. The average over these 14 years is about 70 homes sold in the month of November. Based on the historical behavior of this market, buyers today can expect a doubling of demand over a 2 to 5-year period for the home they buy today. That much increase in demand typically means a significant increase in value.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In future analysis, you may want to start with 1998 or 1999 rather than 1995 in order to geta sense of what a return to normal looks like. The mid-90s period just before the takeover by the financial control board and then Mayor Williams was a low point for the city and the volumes may have been depressed. BTW, I live in 20009; thanks for the shout out.