June Market Stabilization

There is nothing dramatic in the numbers for June. This is good news. The market is relatively stable at this moment.

With the exception of Rappahannock County, inventory remains almost unchanged from May. Rappahannock had a huge jump (for Rappahannock) from 89 to 100 homes for sale. But they also had another good month for sales with 6 homes sold.

In Fauquier, Culpeper and Prince William Counties there was a change of a few properties in the overall inventory. But look at year over year and it's amazing how much we've improved. Prince William has roughly half the inventory it had a year ago. No wonder we're seeing things go under contract in days with multiple offers!

While Fauquier and Culpeper haven't seen the dramatic decrease we've seen in Prince William, each of them has at least 30% less inventory now than a year ago.

As you'd expect, the county with the lowest inventory, Prince William at less than 4 months, shows the most stability in prices. Culpeper and Fauquier both have roughly 8.5 months of inventory and prices still appear to be declining there. But the stats are a little misleading there. Year over year stats show a price decline of approximately 25%. And, while June stats show a price decline over May, the month to month numbers are not very reliable in this category. Because the volume of homes sold in any given month is relatively small, the numbers are easily skewed. Still, prices remain at bargain basement levels.

We are bouncing along the bottom in my opinion, maybe moving up a little in Prince William County. The big question here is still, how long will we stay on the bottom.

I'll be working over the next couple of weeks on a look back at my 2009 predictions and how I'm doing so far. Stay tuned for that and your chance to make fun of my skills as a prognosticator!