National Headlines vs. Local Facts - Arm Yourself with LOCAL Ammo (Market Trends)

At the risk of coming off like a broken record, ALL real estate, including stats, is LOCAL. Here's another post highlighting how critical it is that local real estate professionals provide local context to combat buyer/seller preconceptions of their local market biased by national market headlines. Last night the PBS News Hour aired the first of a series of reports summarizing the national real estate market (worth watching to see what's happening across the country). DSNews.com published an article we stumbled across on the Twitterverse summarizing the distressed composition of the national market and the impact on pricing - Survey: High Share of Distressed Properties Keeps Prices Down

The article cites stats from a variety of sources, including national surveys and national data aggregators.  We don't dispute the conclusions drawn or trends outlined, but are they entirely relevant to YOUR market? Below we've included a few snippets from the article juxtaposed with how they'd read for one of our local regions. Any RBI customer can dive into stats like those below to see how any of the 59 counties stack up against national trends, but for purposes of illustration we'll use the Northern Virginia region.

National: "Over the past six months, the proportion of short sale transactions in the housing market increased from 17.8 percent to 19.9 percent". 

• Northern Virginia: Over the past six months, the proportion of short sale transactions in the housing market decreased from 13.3 percent to 11.5 percent.

National: "Home prices for non-distressed properties in March dropped 5.7 percent from a year ago in March 2011."

• Northern Virginia: Median sales price for non-distressed properties in March dropped .06 percent from a year ago. Average sales price for non-distressed properties in March were up 0.82% from a year ago.

National: "Short sales declined significantly, with prices falling 14.3 percent during the one-year period (March over March)."

• Northern Virginia: Short sale pricing rose significantly, with median pricing up 18.5 percent during the one-year period (March over March). Average sale price up 15.3% year-over-year.

National: "According to a recent RealtyTrac report, the average price of a home sold via short sale in January 2012 was $174,120, down 10 percent from January 2011"

• NoVa: The average price of a home sold via short sale in January 2012 was $298,524, up 3.2 percent from January 2011.

Some of the national trends are comparable to one or more local regions, others are not > Subscribe to rbiEXPERT to make sure you're prepared for clients entering the conversation with national trends clouding their housing market outlook.