I have been working for awhile trying to come up with some good statistics to show where we are for the summer. But it has been frustrating trying to find good statistics.
I have been trying to compare this summer beginning on May 1st until today to the same time frame last year. But I haven’t been able to do that completely.
The chart above from Alaska MLS purports to do that. And they are doing it the best they can with the information that they have.
I have also tried to do it with the Valley MLS system and I came up with completely different numbers…
Here they are:….
AKMLS shows a total of 285 single family residences sold in the core Wasilla area in the summer of 2006 compared to 262 this summer. That is a decrease of about 8%.
Valley MLS shows a total of 386 single family residences sold in exactly the same are during exactly the same time frame in 2006 compared to 293 this year. That is a decrease of almost 25%.
The problem is that the data is very likely skewed. There are more licensees inputting data in AKMLS this summer compared to last summer which makes the decrease smaller than it really is. And there are fewer licensees inputting data into the Valley MLS this summer compared to last making that decrease larger than it really is.
I believe that the accurate number is somewhere between the two and is likely about a 20% decrease in number of units sold this summer compared to last summer.
I’m going to be meeting with computer whiz Ray Wood of Prudential Vista sometime in the next week to try to get accurate figures. We’ll see how close my guess of 20% is.
What we don’t know is if there are real value decreases. I suspect that there are, but they are hard to show right now. Values do not seem to have dropped significantly compared to last year but I don’t have hard data to back up that statement. I discussed this recently with Appraiser Bill Johansen who said that appraisers are not yet showing a negative value adjustment. We will try to get some numbers on that as well.
