bostonbubble.com

[balor123]

Very interesting to follow. Currently Feb - Apr '09 data but good to follow and see how these stats are changing over time. They represent an optimistic bid-ask spread, since we don't see the bids that are rejected. I think these might make a good measure of risk buying in a town. Not sure what's going on in Lincoln. Post any cities here that interest you and let's revisit on this thread every once in a while.

Lexington: $1.45m vs $450k (3.2x)

Newton: $905k vs $499k (1.8x)

Brookline: $1.02m vs $376k (2.7x)

Belmont: $926k v s $487k (1.9x)

Weston: $1.958m vs $719k (2.7x)

Wellesley: $1.6m vs $485k (3.3x)

Needham: $922k vs $475k (1.94x)

Waltham: $397k vs $302k (1.31x)

Watertown: $443k vs $291k (1.52x)

Lincoln: $1.1m vs $26k (42x)

Burlingon: $438k vs $232k (1.89x)

Cambridge: $688k vs $405k (1.7x)

[JCK]

[JCK]

I also wonder if this simply reflects that higher priced properties are sitting on the market for longer than lower priced ones. In my area of Cambridge, the action is definitely happening in the lower price ranges. The $800k+ properties tend to sit a lot longer than the $400k properties.

[balor123]

That was my thought as well. Must be a credit problem. Speaking of which, another big spike in interest rates again today.

[mbh]

That's exactly it - they aren't comparing the original list price to the eventual close price; rather they just average the current list price of all active listings and then compare to the average close price of all recent closes. So all the million dollar homes are still sitting in inventory while the cheap (hah) sub $500K homes are the only ones closing. So I guess it's still an interesting stat, just not an indication that you'll be able to pick up a home in Lexington for a fraction of the asking price.

[mbh]

Two other points: I looked at the recent sales (they list 33) for Lincoln and they are all (except for 1 property) over $300K. So there clearly is a mathematical error in their median sell price.
Second, they are using average list price, but median sell price. The median list would be much more useful, especially in towns like Newton where you have multi-million dollar homes as well as $100K condos. An average tells you very little; a couple extra mansions on the market will throw the whole average way off. I rescind my earlier comment about it being an interesting stat. I don't think it's very useful at all for the towns I'm looking at.

[john p]

Some of these numbers are so high that besides the possiblity that the properties are priced aggresively, Trulia might not have good data for the "Median" or we're seeing more homes at the high end of the price structure on the market??