At the beginning of the month I did a year over year report of homes sold in the area. Yesterday I looked at the December numbers for Iowa City. Today it’s Coralville’s turn. 11 homes sold in Coralville in December 2010 compared to 13 in 2009. Interestingly, just like Iowa City, more condos sold than single family homes. That surprises me and I for one will be watching closely in the coming months to see how that trend continues.
What’s also surprising is that prices are up in Coralville comparing December 2010 to December 2009. I think that probably had something to do with first time home buyers driving the market at the end of 2009. Which of course wasn’t the case in 2010. We still have a lot of homes on the market and that means opportunities for buyers. It doesn’t make sense for prices to rise in any significant way as long as we have a buyers market. That’s why these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. Having said that, I have been getting a lot of calls since the 1st of the year so I feel quite optimistic about the spring market. That’s just pure speculation though. It’s much too early in the year to know what’s going to happen to the real estate market yet. For hard and fast facts you’ll need to check back for future market reports… Or you can Subscribe to my blog and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.
As far as the days on market are concerned, according to data from the Iowa City Area MLS single family homes took an average of 238 days to sell in 2010 compared to 58 days on market in 2009. For condos it was an average of 116 days on market in 2010 compared to 183 in 2009. As you can tell, the numbers are all over the map. I think the data for days on market pulled from the Iowa City MLS is highly manipulated due to expired listings and re-listed properties and would suggest you talk to a Realtor about the actual absorption rate (aka days on market). This is a subject I’ll cover in a post in the near future if you want to check back for that.
Source for data: Iowa City Area MLS January 25, 2011
Iowa City Real Estate Market Report – 2010 Compared to 2009
Coralville IA Real Estate Market Report – 2010 Compared to 2009
