Data Choices
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Buy North Idaho Real Estate Today!
Coeur d'Alene Area Real Estate - 2007 Statistics
We decided to take a look at certain residential listings and see how they sold in 2007 versus 2006. We wanted to be fairly specific in our criteria so we could get an idea for this report about what was going on in Coeur d'Alene and the immediately surrounding areas while ignoring outlying areas that might be incorporated with a full County report. Additionally we decided to only look at homes that had an attached garage or attached carport so that we would not get such a huge discrepancy between average and median values. Here is the specific criteria we used for this report:
Residential Property (includes residence on acreage)
Includes Coeur d'Alene, Dalton Gardens, Post Falls, Hayden, Rathdrum and Hauser, Idaho
Sold in 2007 versus properties recorded sold in 2006
Attached carport or garage (for reason listed above)
We avoided outlying areas, commercial properties and certain investment properties.
Basically we wanted to answer the question; "What kinds of homes are families buying and selling in Coeur d'Alene proper and the surrounding towns of North Idaho?"
We found 1910 properties sold in 2007 versus 2339 sold in 2006, a decrease of 18.3% which is significantly less of a decrease than recently released national figures that dealt with existing home sales. The average days on market in 2007 was under four months versus a median DOM of about three months. The National Association of Realtor's lists six months as being a "normal market." However you should keep in mind that this report is looking at properties that actually sold, which does not take into account homes that failed to sell and were therefore likely to be on the market much longer than this. The average sold price in our 2007 study was $282,865 while the median was considerably lower at $210,000. 1800 - 2000 square feet was the most popular home that sold in 2007. The 2007 Sold:List price was 98.1% on average, and 95.7% on average for Sold:Original List.
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Note that the average price decreased in Hayden and Rathdrum/Hauser, which you would expect when the overall sold volume of houses fell so much. However in Coeur d'Alene, Dalton Gardens and Post Falls the average sold prices of homes actually increased from 2006 to 2007! |
This seems to indicate that homes needed to be priced with less than a five percent margin of error in regards to perceived value. Furthermore, when they were originally priced within five percent of the buyers' perceived value the home sold for more than 98% of its then listed price. This leads us to believe that an accurate Competitive Market Analysis (CMA) is extremely important in selling your home! This would typically preclude computerized CMA's and even "professional" CMA's that disregard basic statistical rules.
Don't know the difference between "average" and "median?"Click here and we will tell you!
Now let's see how that stacks up to the 2006 data:
For 2006 the average and median days on market were almost identical to the 2007 figures. $265,641 was the average sold price in 2006 and the median was $214,000. This large discrepancy in both years between average and median makes it difficult to determine a true price trend within our sample data. It does seem to indicate, however, that high end properties continued to increase in value despite an overall down market.
The sold price as a percentage of list was 98.6% on average in 2006 and the sold price as a percentage of the original list price was 96.4% on average. 1800-2000 was still the most popular square footage in homes sold.
So while overpriced homes and land are not selling, properly priced homes and land do sell in a very reasonable time frame! Two, three and four bedroom homes were very popular, but homes with as few bedrooms as one and as many as eight did sell during the year.
May, June, July and August were the best months for sellers in terms of units sold. November, December, January and February were the worst months.
We believe this data indicates that the North Idaho Real Estate Market is much more "level" than other parts of the country. Some of this is reflected in the figures for Spokane, WA which were recently released by the National Association of Realtors. Nevertheless the Coeur d'Alene market is different than Spokane - and the market does not appear to be near as bad as other hard hit parts of the country!
As the real estate market as a whole recovers and baby boomers continue to retire to Coeur d'Alene, we believe that the local market will maintain a resilience that will be unique to North Idaho.
Note: This is not an offer to buy or sell properties in Idaho or any other part of the country. The information in this article is merely an opinion on the real estate market. It uses data from the Coeur d'Alene Association of Realtors which is believed to be accurate but is not guaranteed. No statement within this article should be viewed as a suggestion or statement to buy or sell real estate for investment purposes or any other purpose! The data was garnered from sources believed to be accurate but is not guaranteed. The 2008 real estate recovery prediction is a forward looking document which is only an opinion.
The average figure is simply a total of the values divided by the number of values in that total. For tightly packed numbers the average works well. The median is much like the median in the center of a highway. It is the actual figure that has an equal number of values greater than it as it does less than the figure. So when numbers are "lopsided" on the high end or the low end the average figure will be quite different than the median figure. This is a "quick and easy" way of determining how valuable the average figure may be. Of course standard deviation is a much better indicator, but proper understanding of average versus median can help you determine the "reliability" of either figure in the data sample.
For more click here.
