Last week I posted my monthly market reports for January for Iowa City, Coralville and North Liberty. Now I’m thinking you’re probably here on a fact finding mission and you need the numbers for last year too. Below is my very first attempt at a chart in Google Docs. The idea is to visualize data to make it less boring, (although this doesn’t exactly “pop”, I’m hoping I will get more creative as I go along). It shows the number of homes sold by area comparing 2009 to 2008. Below that is a table comparing the median price and the average days on market.

Source: Iowa City Area MLS

North Liberty had the strongest home sales in the area in 2009 with a 15% increase over 2008. Iowa City showed a modest increase of 3%. That’s misleading though, if you check the Iowa City Market Report for December, you’ll see that home sales were strong in the last quarter and up by 33% in Iowa City. Coralville bounces around a bit. Coralville does well with the move-up buyer, but wasn’t able to attract first time homebuyers with stiff competition from North Liberty and Iowa City.