Over the past 12 months, Penn Laird has outrun the other area towns in terms of average sales price by quite a margin. This is due to the fact that, nestled between Harrisonburg and McGaheysville, it consists of higher end neighborhoods and a much smaller geographical footprint than any other town in the metro area. Grottoes is the most affordable town to purchase a home in, with average sales price of less than $150k.

Sometimes, a home is listed and takes months or even years to sell. Other times, a home will sit on the market for just a week or so. To determine how quickly buyers are moving, and to see how “hot” our local real estate market it, we’re tracking Buyer Urgency, which is the number of homes that go under contract within just 30 days of the list date. Over the past 12 months, 48 homes have sat on the market for less than a month before a buyer decided to purchase it. (In January alone, there were 4.)

Over the past 12 months, there have been 34.0% more homes for sale in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, and 40.8% new listings during the same time frame. This is a huge amount of growth for the real estate market, and we believe contracts will continue to grow throughout the year as well. However, only time will tell if the rate of buyers purchasing homes can match that of the growing inventory.

The Harrisonburg and Rockingham County real estate market has seen more sales in the $151k – $250k price range for homes that both have at least one price reduction, and those that don’t have any. As you can see, many more homes sell without price reductions, and at a quicker pace. One major factor in selling a home is the original list price. If it is priced too high to begin with, it will likely sit on the market for a significant amount of time, even when a price reduction takes place, which can cost the seller a lot of money and frustration.

The City of Harrisonburg saw the most sales without price reductions at 224. That is 63% of total sales in the city. 64% of sales in both of the northern sections of Rockingham County experienced no price reductions as well. Although Massanutten Resort saw much fewer sales without price cuts, they still accounted for 53% of that area’s sales.

Single family homes, as predicted, have experienced the most sales over the past 12 months at 76% of the total. Townhomes and duplexes booked 17% and 7% of total sales, respectively. Not only have we seen townhomes decreases in sales prices, but also in number of sales, but duplex sales have increased by 26.7% since last year at this time!

We saw earlier that most sales occur in the $151k – $250k price range, but when we look at these numbers by property type, we see that while most single family homes and duplexes sell in this price range, more townhomes sell under $150k. We’ve also seen a significant increase (26.7%) in duplex sales over the past year, and a 9.6% decrease in townhouse sales.

It is helpful to watch trends in sales prices by property type because comparing a townhouse to a single family (detached) home simply isn’t comparing “apples to apples.” The median sales price on single family homes over the past year is $194,250, down 0.4% from last year at this time. Townhomes are up 6.2% from last year, and duplexes are up 6.1%. We are thrilled with the price increases in the attached homes, and feel confident in the steadiness of prices in single family homes.

Did you know that occasionally there are homes that sell over their list price? Back in the real estate boom, this was quite common, but now… not so much. However, over the past 12 months, 80 homes (7.7% of total sales) in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County have sold over their final asking price. That is down 5.9% from last year at this time.

Year-to-date sales are down nearly 10%, but be encouraged: (1) it is only the beginning of the year, (2) sales prices have skyrocketed (though this will likely even out soon), and (3) contracts are up nearly 12%, which implies that we’ll see sales growth over the next few months.