By Dave Phillips, CEO

Charlottesville Area Association of REALTORS®

Have you ever stood in your kitchen, felt a creative surge and decided to “invent” a new recipe that will land you a “celebrity guest” spot on one of Rachael Ray’s shows on the Food Network? Okay, maybe that’s just me. Sometimes the recipe turns out well, like my yogurt-mustard sauce to accent a tuna steak, but other times, like my Pumpkin Meatloaf, the recipe is a bit hard to swallow.

The local Charlottesville area real estate market is a lot like my Pumpkin Meatloaf – a combination of ingredients that don’t work well together. Like a good recipe, a good real estate market is one that features a good balance of ingredients. If you put in a little too much of one ingredient, the dish may not taste very good; however, if you put in way too much of that ingredient, the dish becomes unpalatable. The recipe for the Charlottesville area real estate market has way too much of one ingredient – supply of homes for sale – and that has created an unbalanced recipe that is hard to swallow.

As reported in the 2007 Year-End Market Report, the local (and national) real estate market slowed down quickly during the second half of 2007. That slowdown continued into the first quarter of 2008, but there are some signs of improvement. What has NOT improved is the oversupply of homes on the market. In addition, many of these homes have been on the market for a long time, indicating that they are still priced too high for the current market. On a positive note, our market appears to have only minimal problems with defaults, foreclosures and short sales. These issues are present in the local market, but they are not the significant problem being felt in other states and localities.

There were 557 homes sold in the first quarter of 2008, which was down 210 (-27.4%) from the first quarter 2007. All local areas (Albemarle -40%, Charlottesville -7.1%, Fluvanna -26.4%, Greene -27.5%, Louisa -14.3%, and Nelson -35.6%) posted lower sales than the same period last year. This is the lowest number of sales reported in the MLS for the first quarter since 2000.
written by DAVE PHILLIPS….Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors