Spring has come early this year, and there are some encouraging signs happening in the Severna Park real estate market right now. Perhaps the most striking statistic is the average days on market in February 2012 was 93 days compared to 184 days in February 2011.
Additionally the number of pending home sales in Feb 2012 clocks in at 50 whereas last February there was only 37 pending sales. Twenty one Severna Park properties were sold in Feb '12, slightly higher than the 18 last February and way higher than the 10 sales in Feb '10.
Another encouraging statistic is the average sold to list price ratio which was 92.6% this February versus 90.8% in Feb '11. It seems as though we are indeed heading in a positive direction.
The question then becomes can we sustain this momentum?
In my own real estate office, we are experiencing a significant increase of calls coming in both from buyers inquiring about properties as well as sellers looking for market analyses prior to listing their properties.
There are several possible explanations for this positive activity ranging from upbeat economic news, to the fact that interest rates have slightly increased recently motivating buyers to get off the fence and take advantage of the historic low rates.
Additionally, many sellers have lived with this challenging market for several years and are now more willing to price their homes closer to current market value. Whatever the reasons are - lets hope the trend continues!
All of this still translates into an unmitigated disaster for those that bought into the height of the market in 2005-2006. I moved to Severna Park back in 2005 and plunked down 25% of the cost of the house. I put an additional $100,000 in improvements. Today, all of it is gone. Then top it off with Zillow telling me month after month my home value continues to decline, despite announcements from pundits that indeed the market is coming back. Now I plan on living here for quite some time and it is my home...so to me all of this is white noise. However, when you are told that home ownership is the biggest "investment" of your life it appears I don't invest my money very well.
Second: You only made a bad investment if you try to sell now and lose all that money. If you planned on flipping the house after putting 100k into it then, yes maybe house flipping isn't the best thing for you. On the good side, you have a great house in a nice place to live in for 10 years then you can sell for a tidy profit!