January 2020 Numbers Are In

OVERALL: January was off the charts. Total sales were up $59.3MM over January 2019. Note: that is not 25% higher, it’s 125% higher! There was $32MM more in Commercial sales, but that still leaves $27MM more in overall sales without Commercial which is still 57% gain over last year in the other categories.

HOMES: The average price per square foot (ppsf) dropped to $164.56 from $178.15 in December – this is normal for this time of the year but it is still almost $30 more ppsf than January 2019.

LOT SALES (subdivision) stayed the same – 72 sales for an average of $20,475. Ironically, Avery’s lot price per acre $8002.75 was lower than their raw land price per acre $12,109.

It was a small data pool (15 sales), so I expect it is an aberration.

RAW LAND SALES normalized after Decembers’ 2,279 acres sold to 640 acres for January. The price per acre increased to $5,183.59. This does represent an increase of over $1,000 per acre over January 2019.

HIGH-END RESORT LAND (HERL) did surprisingly well for the winter with 20 sales and $4MM in dollar volume. This category is usually considerably slower in the winter.

COMMERCIAL had some significant sales including the Walmart property ($14MM) and several medium-sized apartment buildings. There was $32MM in sales in January 2020 compared to $3.5MM in January 2019. There were several mini-storage facilities that changed hands as well.

Foreclosure/REO Sales are still low with only 3 foreclosure sales (one being a home foreclosure sale). This is good news and indicates a stronger seller’s market and interest rates remain low allowing more people to buy or refinance.