Just a quick OPINION, not backed up by facts as I am to busy to check the stats. I believe that county wide medians will become less relevant as the decline continues. I am simply echoing what some have already pointed out in various threads. To me the median as a whole for the county is becoming less relevant due to the profile of the depreciating trend. It is abundantly clear that less desireable homes are seeing declining sales alot faster then desireable homes. This in turn will serve to push the median sales price up even though the NUMBER of total sales decrease. To me this is an even GREATER factor then the growing amounts of credits we (or at least I) am seeing in typical transactions that are awarded from sellers to buyers.
Again just an opinion but I “think” it would bear out to be true if someone were to crunch numbers. An increase in median price doesn’t represent the overall market health on it’s own. One needs to factor in number of sales, in a big way.
It’s probably fair to say that the median is going to be a lagging indicator because although all the different market segments are interconnected those connections are not rigid. The market as a whole doesn’t move in a monolithic lock-step fashion, but in bits and pieces, in fits and starts.
We’re so busy watching the leading indicators that the published lagging indicators seem hopelessly outdated. This is why we tell Piggingtonians not to worry about missing the bottom because they’ll see it coming long before it actually hits. The newspapers will be saying that it’s still getting worse and we’ll be saying that the time is ripe for a good move.
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