It has come to my attention that everyone seems to want to know what their home is worth in Northwest Arkansas. While I can’t imagine why, I’ll try to accomodate. *snicker* Home prices in Benton County in particular are not as grave as they may seem. We are seeing a large number of price drops in Bentonville, Rogers, and Bella Vista because some homes have been on the market a long time.
Generally speaking, we’ve seen un uptrend in sales, showings, and offers in the last few months. We’ve also seen an uptrend in for sale by owner properties which I think can be mostly attributed to the fact that people feel they have less money to spend marketing their property. While I am not going to go into the many benefits of having a good Realtor, I will say that most of these properties end up listing anyway (something to think about if you are one of those people and don’t want to waste anymore time).
For all of Benton County there has been over 1765 sales in the past six month. I do not guarantee that accuracy about such a number because this is MLS data (which is not perfect) and there may be sales that have not been recorded here. Of those sales since February of this year, the average price is $189,430 with the average square footage being 2,023. That gives us an average price per foot of $93.63. Not too bad considering there are REO properties selling in the mid $50’s per foot. Let’s also look at the SP/LP ratio (Sale Price to List Price) and see what you can expect to get after listing your home near market value. Average list price was $196,647, average sale price was $189,430. The SP/LP ratio comes out to about 96.3%. This is expected with homes that have been on the market for a while as well as homes that are slightly overpriced.
Another encouraging sign regarding market strenth is the number of pending sales. 523 homes are pending at this time. That means a sale should occur within the next 15-60 days and that the property has entered escrow. That is about 30% of the sales for the past six months.
Average Days on Market for Benton County homes at this time is 154 for sold listings, and 146 for current listings. Speaking of homes currently for sale, there are 3,697 of them. That seems on the high side so make sure you are competitively priced when selling your home. You should also carefully consider your marketing plan with your agent to differentiate your property from all those other listings. Obviously price is a base consideration but you might consider agent incentives, web video, and viral marketing along with a serious internet presence. It’s all about getting your property exposure after all.
September 10, 2008 at 4:35 pm
This is great news! It really says something about our community when our homes are increasing in value when the homes across the country are decreasing. I hope everyone’s home starts to gain worth, but it is nice knowing, also, that no matter how the economy is performing our homes here are nearly immune.