Today, finally, I'll get around to talking about the numbers for Warren County.

Inventory in Warren County has stayed relatively stable month over month. There were 560 homes listed for sale in February and 567 in March. No significant difference there. Surprisingly enough, Warren County is the one county where there's very little difference year over year in this number. In March of 2007 there were 558 homes listed.

93 new listings came on the market in February. March was up slightly with 98. There's a significant difference in last year's numbers, however. In March of 2007 there were 161 new listings.

We do start to see some differences with contracts, month over month. In February there were 22 new contracts. In March that jumped up to 34. Of course, that's less impressive when you consider that a year ago there were 52 new contracts.

There were 24 closed sales in March, 22 in February and a year ago there were 39.

Overall, the patterns are similar to what we've seen in the other counties.

Prices in Warren County are down almost 17% year over year. It's worse than Fauquier, Culpeper or Rappahannock, but not as bad as Prince William.

Next week I promise an end to all these boring statistics for awhile!

Time to take a closer look at one of those really hard hit Culpeper subdivisions, Lakeview.

Construction in Lakeview started about six years ago and is just about finishing now. In this market that pretty much guarantees that anyone who about in the first few years has seen the value of their homes decline substantially.

The completed subdivision is supposed to have approximately 600 homes, a combination of single family homes and townhomes.

There are currently 45 homes listed for sale in Lakeview. Of those 9 are new construction. Thirty three of those homes are vacant. 17 are foreclosures. 7 have been disclosed as short sales. Although disclosing this in the listing is a requirement, it doesn't always happen. So there may be additional short sales that aren't clearly flagged.

The cheapest townhouse here is $188,500. The cheapest detached home is $216,000. The most expensive townhouse is $239,000. The most expensive detached home is $399,000.

The good news is that 34 homes sold in this community in the last year. So things are selling. The bad news is probably best shown in the most recent sale, one that closed just this week.

A brick detached home with a side-loading two car garage, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths and a full, unfinished basement sold for a net of $222,450.

Considering that there are townhouses listed for considerably more than that at the moment, prices still have a ways to fall here. Even the nicest homes in this subdivision will have trouble commanding prices close to $400,000 given these kind of comparables in the neighborhood. And, if you should get lucky enough to get that kind of offer, I wouldn't count on getting an appraisal that comes in at or above purchase price.

Culpeper remains one of the hardest hit areas, even more so in newer subdivisions such as Lakeview. But if you're bargain hunting, this is a promising place to look!

There's lots of talk out there about what's happening in the housing market.  But let's look at some hard numbers for some of the local jurisdictions.

As you can see, Fauquier County has been hit substantially harder than surrounding areas. I don't have Culpeper numbers right now, but I would speculate that they are worse than Culpeper. John McClain, senior fellow at the center for Regional Analysis, George Mason University says we've taken the brunt of this because of the large percentage of new construction on the market here. When existing homes are competing against that much new construction and the upgrades being offered for free often add up to $50K or more, existing homes lose!

The good news is that some of that inventory is starting to be absorbed. With numbers this low, I believe we will not see substantial continued decreases in prices, at least in the outlying counties.  But don't hold your breath for a quick rebound either! There are still a lot of empty new homes out there!