Lexington Kentucky Real Estate

The Lexington Kentucky newspaper, The Lexington Herald-Leader, had an interesting article on their Friday January 18 2008 edition of their newspaper on the front page regarding how homes for sale in Lexington KY and the rest of the central region in Kentucky, had declined overall for 2007.  So, these figures represent the entire metropolitan area including Georgetown, Nicholasville, Versailles, etc.

Overall, the sales of homes for sale in Lexington Kentucky decreased by 18.4% for December 2007 - with a year end value of a decrease of 8.2% relative to the previous year in 2006.

Overall, the average price for homes that sold was only slighty decreased from what they had been in previous years as announced by the Lexington Bluegrass Association of Realtors - so thats good news.  The average sold price was only decreased by 0.3% (a near negligible value in my opinion).  And the median price was only down approximately 1.2% overall.

And there were some high spots in the Lexington KY real estate market.  Values for townhomes and condominiums increased in 2007.  They both saw strong gains rising 6% with a median price increasing by 11%.  However, this isn’t necessarily statistically meaningful as less than 100 units are sold per month in the Lexington KY real estate market - and this number has possibly been swayed by the increase in new units of condominiums for sale in Lexington’s downtown area that are starting to come onto the local market.

December 2007 was a little off - with only 615 properties being sold, and the lowest since January 2007 when the market saw only 524 properties that were sold.

So, by now, I’m certain many of you are wondering how long did the homes take to sell.  The average market time for Lexington KY was 79 days in December 2007.  This is superior to what it was a year prior in December 2006 when it stood at 93 days, but again overall the average market time was much longer in 2007 with the average market time being 85 days - which is 9 days more than it was in 2006.

Again, December 2007 was a slow month for the local market.  The average sold price for a home in December was a decrease of 4.3%, and the median dropped 1.95%.

The amount of inventory on the market (the number of homes for sale in total actively), was fairly flat with less than a 1% adjustment between December 2006 and December 2007 - and overall for the entire year of 2007.  So, from an inventory standpoint, there really hasn’t been much change.  The total market inventory numbers are as follows:  December 2007 had 6263 homes for sale.  November 2007 had 6616 homes for sale.  This decrease can probably be reflected more to homes being taken off the market for the holidays, than homes that actually sold.

Now, lets look at the rate that sales are coming off the market.  For December 2007, the total number of pending homes (homes that have a contract on them that is waiting to close), was the lowest that its been in 3 years with a total of 469.  For reference, there were 594 in November 2007, and 544 in December 2006.

So, if you look at the big picture - you can see some 65oo or so homes for sale.  And that approximately 500-600 homes go pending each month.  This means that there is roughly 13 months worth of inventory on the market.  [6500 / 500-600 = approx. 13]  This indicates a soft Lexington KY real estate market overall.  Anytime you get over a few months of inventory - supply and demand economic basics start taking hold.  Anytime you have too much supply, and not enough demand, prices drop overall.

Now, that being said - is it a good time to sell your home?  YES - if you are moving up to a larger home.  The difference that you lose percentage-wise on your lower priced home, will be more than offset by the value that you will receive by the same percentage on the home of higher value.

If you are looking to downsize, or make a lateral move, its probably not the best time to do that if you have to sell your existing property.

But, it is a great time overall to buy real estate.  There are many sellers that need to get their property sold, and there are deals to be made.  Someone will be making some deals - and in a short period of time, you can reasonably expect that they’ll be sticking that money in their pocket by having built in equity when the real estate market improves.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Fayette County, Nicholasville KY Real Estate, Georgetown KY Real Estate, Versailles KY Real Estate, Lexington KY Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.