Thursday, August 9, 2007

The Weekly Screen Scrape - Mind the Gap

The last three weeks have seen similar trends. Lots of activity, contracts, price drops, new listings, escrow closings, and some folks giving up and taking their listing off the MLS.

The gulf is widening between the price per square foot of houses still on the market compared to those under contract. The under-contract average asking price per square foot is down to $203 in Folsom and El Dorado Hills! Of course this just applies to the houses in my search criteria (20 pending and 64 still on the market).

Looking forward to seeing the July and August sales stats.

P.S. I was going to give special kudos to the person who could give the original reference from the title of the post...but Wikipedia makes things too easy these days.

14 comments:

... said...

The "gap" between listing price per foot and sold price per foot is a statistical anomoly that will almost always occur. Why - because there is more volume (# homes) below the median price than above and the higher price homes have higher per foot prices.

There is no "quick and dirty" stat that will answer every question, but as Little Johnny said, "you're thinking"

Anonymous said...

Mind the gap is an english term for watching your step. It was still being used in Hong Kong in 96.

Buying Time said...

Sippn are you trying to confuse me again? If so, you are doing a really good job. How can there be more houses below the median?...by definition its in the middle.

I am humble enough to admit, I often don't "get" a lot of your comments. At least you offer explanations sometimes....Mary Janes.

Cmyst said...

Is this an obscure shoe reference? I had a dream several weeks ago about shoes because I foolishly went to eBay to look up some shoes that Gwynster was interested in to see what all the fuss was about.
If I tried to walk in those, I'd break my neck!

... said...

BUSTED-I thought I was the only "fan" looking up mary janes, but I'm not admitting to any dreams.

BT you're right it is the middle but the bell curve is skewed towards expensive.

(kid stolemy space bar)

Anonymous said...

LOLOL
They are surprisingly comfortable. Cheap heels are a pain to walk in. Besides, you don't walk in CL's, you strut >; )

http://www.christianlouboutin.fr/

Anonymous said...

Perfect is getting the whole dataset to play with.

Mean, median, or mode are like the theatrical trailer of real information, just cut slightly different for each target audience.

Anonymous said...

AB, I could be wrong, but I get the impression that sippn enjoys baiting you ...

... said...

:o

Anonymous said...

Well I'm glad to be in cash right now in my roth IRA.Sold back in march and watched things sky rocket.I will dollar cost average back into the market on the huge down days. Today might be a buy if the market really tanks in the last hour.Buy panic and sell into greed and you to can live the dream.

Caveat Emptor!!!!!!!!!!!!

Buying Time said...

We were just being lazy (and hopeful we would find a place soon) with our down payment, and put it into a high yield savings account. Now I don't feel so ashamed about it!

Anonymous said...

You know you've "arrived" when Sippin starts picking on you >; )

norcaljeff said...

It makes sense to track ave price per sqft. If you look at more recent date, within the past 4-5 years, you will see that the price per sqft is going lower. Builders are trying to keep prices artificially higher by building bigger homes. Just look at homes back in 2001 and look at them now. Pretty much everything in Placer Co now is well over 2200 sqft. The reason homes in South Placer are still over $400K is b/c builders are building nothing but homes over 2200-2500 sqft.

norcaljeff said...

BTW, the new Underground trains in London no longer have "gaps" so soon we'll have a generation of people who won't understand that saying :)