We’ve turned another page in our calendars and that means it is also time for our real estate Market Report. A few updates have been made to our report because we think it needed a bit of sprucing up. We now have two main sections: Sales and Contracts. We’re also showing both month-to-month changes, and year-to-date changes, so you get a bigger picture of how our local market is progressing through the year. (And as always, if you have suggestions for even more improvement to this report, comment below and let us know!)

Note: Click any of the images to enlarge.

Compared to last month, sales have increased by 21.2%! Sales prices increased by about 9%, average square footage by almost 5%, and home values by over 4%. This is a small slice of time to be looking at, but positive results are always welcome.

As for year-to-date, sales have decreased by almost 13% (but contracts have increased this year… see below). Sales prices have also decreased, and home values have decreased by 9.4%.

[We love a nice looking graph.] Above, you can see the progress throughout 2011 for number of sales by month. Sales typically do increase from the beginning of the year through the summer months, and usually fall again by the end of the year. We suspect this will be the case for this year as well. Nevertheless, it is still nice to see positive numbers!

Now, contracts! Do you see that increase of 30% in contracts from May to June? And the 16.71% increase in contracts from last year to this year? THAT is the highlight of this report. An uptick in contracts means buyers are out, and buyers are buying. Contracts almost always lead to sales. More sales means more money going into our local economy. More money going into our local economy leads to recovery. We’re feeling bold enough to say that we do believe we have surpassed the bottom of the Great Recession here in Harrisonburg!

Above is a chart showing the number of contracts produced by month for this year. The past three months have been very positive, and we hope to continue to post strong numbers for the next few months as well.

The third and final section of our new and improved Market Report is listings. There were 4% more listings on the market in June than in May, but there were 57% more this year than last. 1,558 listings in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County combined. That is a lot of inventory. We’ve also seen an increase of 31.46% in new listings this year compared to 2010. Perhaps more sellers are finding confidence in this market, and are willing to put their homes on the market with strong hopes of selling. As we already noted, this confidence is not far-fetched. There are buyers out there. And they are buying.

And now for our final graph: New Listings. Harrisonburg and Rockingham County are experiencing a steady number of new listings come on the market this year. We’ll just have to see if the buyers can keep up, or if we’ll continue to see an increase in inventory.

… Stay tuned for more Market Trends here on Harrisonblog!