I haven't posted to my blog in a while for a variety of reasons; one being that I have been extremely busy because the real estate market in Ithaca is not suffering the same downward turn as in other areas of the country, and generally doesn't.

A recent article in the Ithaca Journal dated July 18 espoused the discouraging news about the difficulty that first time homebuyers have. As pointed out in a letter to the editor by my esteemed colleague and good friend, Peggy Haine, even first-time homebuyers have the great good fortune to be able to avail themselves of services provided by Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services for Tompkins County and also the SONYMA program that allows first time homebuyers, that qualify, to take advantage of, among other perks, a lower interest rate.

So the sky isn't falling. The real estate market always experiences fluctuations, By and large, real estate prices are reflective of the uniqueness of a property competing against other properties at a given time. If there are several similar homes on the market at one time, prices tend to go down. Because of the transient nature of the Ithaca population, we have more buyers than other areas (particularly in the spring) to absorb the excess housing and competition for the declining number of homes will cause the selling prices to escalate.

Buying real estate is not risky and is a great way to build wealth over the long run. Don't buy into all of the doom and gloom about the poor state of the real estate market. We're doing just fine in the Ithaca area.

The Ithaca Board of Realtors has just released the Annual Statistics Report for Residential Properties to its members. There were no big surprises. The real estate market in Ithaca has remained fairly steady over the past 12 months as the statistics bear out. Traditionally, the market value of homes in Ithaca continues to increase, albeit only slightly some years. This is possibly because of the transient nature of our residents due to the college population.

Tompkins County saw 1,041 closed sales in 2006 (there were 1,040 closed sales in 2005). The average selling price was $193,506 in 2006 and $184,026 in 2005. The average selling price to list price was 96.8% last year, and 96.6% in 2005, and the average days on the market was 61 in 2006 and 55 in 2005.

The Belle Sherman School District saw the most closed sales, followed by the Dryden Central School District and then Caroline. By dollar volume, Cayuga Heights came in first, followed by Belle Sherman and then Lansing Central.

If you have any questions about sales of properties in areas of interest to you, I'd be happy to talk to you!