Buyers take a holiday

Summit County real estate sales saw a sharp drop both sequentially and year over year as buyers appear to have joined in the year end holidays. Transaction volume in December dropped 29% to 132 sales versus 185 a year ago. That was the worst December performance since 2008. Sales were also down sequentially by 22% from the November period. While historically (pre market crash), December has shown seasonal weakness, three of the previous four years had actually experienced solid gains.
Dollar volume followed a similar pattern falling 20% year over year to $69.7 million and slipping 13% from the November 2013 level.
Even with the weaker December results, 2013 turned in a strong year. Total transactions rose 17% to 1,908. That is still well below the 3,699 seen in 2005 but the best number generated since 2007. Dollar volume was up 15% for the year to $888.8 million. That is half the volume experienced in 2006 but again the best level seen in the last five years.
Even with the higher volumes, the price point mix continues to shift downward. In 2013, 66.1 percent of all residential transactions were for properties under $500,000. In 2012, that number was 63.5%. Conversely, sales of $1 million or more represented 7.8 percent of sales down from 8.1% in 2012.
Average selling prices (ASPs) for residential properties were down only slightly. The ASP for single family homes dropped a little less than 2% to $751,240 and for multi-family properties the ASP dropped just over 2% to $344,578. Raw land prices actually rose about 5% to $324,000 on average.