Here we are living in a limbo land of great unknowns. Not easy for anyone. Not any way to plan for the future. Just plain difficult. As I said on the home page I was a bit surprised to see how healthy this year's market has been based on the January 1 through March 28 data. Having had significant losses of people important to me in the last year or so, real estate had faded into the woodwork for me. Not a big priority. I'm emerging from most of that and so find that looking at our statistics is helpful. Also, in the future, I'd like to work with realistic people who respond to the numbers. It is hard enough to do a job if people don't want to see what we provide as professionals. That said, here are the numbers for the four counties of the Northern Neck which include Richmond, Westmoreland, Lancaster and Northumberland. I'm only putting up the residential numbers and may go back and look at land. It all depends on my energy and interest.
Solds 1.1 through 3.28
| All residential |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
Active |
| # sold |
96 |
108 |
121 |
451 |
| $ sold (millions) |
24.3 |
31.3 |
38.7 |
207.6 |
| Median sales price |
196,000 |
236,000 |
236,700 |
349,900 |
| Median days on market |
190 |
146 |
169 |
159 |
| |
|
|
|
|
This does show that our market has been chugging right along with signficant dollar sales of $38.7 million just in the first quarter. A significant increase over last year. Not bad.
Solds 1.1. through 3.28
| WF residential (subset) |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
Active |
| # sold |
41 |
50 |
59 |
275 |
| $ sold (millions) |
16.4 |
22.5 |
28.7 |
166.4 |
| Median sales price |
370,000 |
348,649 |
420,000 |
474,000 |
| Median days on market |
222 |
156 |
260 |
195 |
Looking at the waterfront solds the question that comes to mind is in 2020 when we've had a greater number of sales and a greater total value in those sales we also see that there is a median days on market of 260. That tells me that probably there was some heavy discounting on the original listing price. It may well be that I'll go back and look at that to see what happened there. If I do, the I'll report back. In the meantime if we round up 59 (number of sales for the first quarter of 2020) by multiplying by 4 what we find is that there isn't too much difference between what we would have expected annually for sales to the number of actives. That would have been the way we have looked at this if this were a normal year. Time will tell, but obviously we've never seen anything like this.
One last thought is that in a world that has become increasingly focused on amenities and life in the city, our type of location may now have a deeper meaning to people. Being in nature. Being in a less congested area may become a plus rather than a loss in terms of convenience and shopping. Yes, time will tell.
