Improved Stats and Sale to List Price Ratios
I’m working on a new and improved (hopefully) version of the Tucson market statistics page, so I’ve been considering what kind of information would be helpful to include and at what level of detail, and balance that with not having statistic generation become a full time job.
By the way - if there’s something you’ve been dying to see on that page, or some other metric you’d be interested, leave a comment and I’ll put it on the list for consideration.
Anyway. So I was perusing the latest market statistics put out by the Tucson MLS, and at the end of the president’s introduction, she says that the ratio between list price and sales price averages at 95.34%.
The list to sales price ratio is a figure that hasn’t been included in those reports for a while, at least not in a prominent manner, like it used to be.
So I’m looking at that 95% sales price to list price ratio, and I’m thinking - of my most recent buyers and sellers, no one paid 95% of list. Most of my buyers found very well priced homes, moved quickly, and got those houses. My last few listings haven’t closed yet, so I can’t disclose specifics, but we’re pretty darn close to list price on those too.
What all the averages and numbers don’t take into account is individual pricing. Sure, maybe we can use average numbers if the house is average and the price is average. But sometimes, we’re looking at a new listing, with a fabulous price - and there’s no way you’ll get it for 95% of list. Heck, I’ve been in bidding wars and multiple counter offers several times this year.
There seems to be a perception that buyers can get sharp discounts off of every house. And I’ll gladly agree that there are still vastly overpriced homes out there where that applies. But it isn’t a hard and fast rule. You can’t just take 5% off every list price and expect that to be accepted. Some sellers ARE pricing very well, are demonstrating clear value, and their houses are selling fast. You’ve really got to analyze each home individually, on it’s own relative merits, before making a decision as to value.
Back to my numbers now. I wonder - if you track the rate of change of, say, average sales price or active listings, would there be too much bounce in the data, especially on a per area basis? And would smoothing it take away any value that data might have had? Anyone?
