Market Update for Nevada-County-Grass Valley-Nevada City-CA

• Buyer Activity Is the Highest It Has Been in at least Five Years!  With an astounding 168 homes pending in the month of March alone, buyer demand continues to be through the roof.  Pending sales for March were more than double the amount of many months and is the highest we’ve seen in at least five years. By the way, the preliminary number of pending sales for April 2015 is 143, which is easily the second highest (next to March 2015) for at least the last two years.

• New Listings are Being Gobbled Up Quickly:  188 new listings hit the market in March. That’s the highest we’ve seen since last June. However, the buyer demand is eating up the inventory. 45% of the new escrows were on listings being on the market for only 21 days or less. Based on the number of pending sales, our months of inventory is down to an unbelievable 2.3 months. That’s a whole month of supply down from February. This calculation means that theoretically if no new listings hit the market, we would sell our remaining inventory in just over 2 months. We ended the month of March with 10% more available homes than in February, which is a very modest increase. The truth is, we need more salable homes to enter the market to meet the huge demand.

• Price Appreciation is Solid and Steady:  The average sold price for this first quarter in 2015 is up 11.8% from Q1 2014. The rolling twelve month average sold price is 5.8% higher than the previous twelve months. That kind of appreciation is meaningful, and the rolling twelve month average appreciation is sustainable.

(Network Real Estate)