Weekly Special | February 21, 2016

New Sellers Demanding More For Their Homes

There is ample evidence of real estate appreciation now in Tallahassee. After years of seeing buyers control the market in all price ranges, things have moved back to a more level playing field for all price ranges at or near the median home price.

The graph above is simple, but requires a lot of work to produce. Intense scrutiny of every home for sale was involved so that we can separate fresh listings (homes listed for sale for the first time) compared to those that have been on the market without selling in prior years.

The blue bars record the median sales price of fresh listings each month (recorded on the left vertical axis), while the orange bars record the median home value each month, recorded as price per square foot and shown on the right vertical axis.

The trend of both home prices and home values are shown as straight lines in their respective colors.

The blue line shows the median price that buyers are paying, while the orange line shows the median value that sellers are receiving.

For the past eight months, the median home price has not moved much, yet the median home value is moving higher (up nearly 3%), so less home for the money.

Thus the median home buyer is still spending $180,000, but the median home size being purchased has dropped from roughly 1,630 square feet down to an even 1,600 square feet.

The original one-page Weekly Special PDF is still available.