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Finally! Positive Numbers!

by Jim Stakem 8/13/2009

belmont country club, loudoun county, ashburn, sterling, leesburg, round hill, south riding

July broke the long slump, if only by a little bit. The average sale price in our survey INCREASED in July! I wouldn't consider my house an ATM and plan on using the equity, it only went up 1%, (but at this point I will take anything and the trend is up.) I don't really believe values actually went up. What I believe really happened is a slight thaw in the higher priced market combined with less underpriced property on the market. These are both very positive signs!

We are definitely not out of the woods yet. There are a number of things which are still problems. What are banks going to do with their large inventory of foreclosed homes? Will rising unemployment trigger further foreclosures? What are interest rates going to do? Will the extremely conservative appraisals continue to dampen the market? These and other trouble spots need serious attention but at least we are moving in the right direction.

One major worry in this month's statistics is the huge decline in the number of settled sales. There was a 27% decrease in transactions. This appears to be because of the supply in the lower priced listings. The demand still seems strong however we just don't have the product to meet the demand.