Merry Christmas…

Residential sales in the towns included in our Lakes Region report took a pretty good nose dive in November. We posted only 38 sales compared to 56 last November. The average sales price came in at $259,817 compared to an average of $409,913 last November. The average sales price was down mostly due to the fact that there were no sales at all last month that exceeded $1 million. That is pretty unusual for our area but sometimes it happens and it does wreak havoc with the averages. In November 2007 there were five sales for a total of $7.3 million in sales volume. Sixty percent of the homes sold last month were under $200,000 which once again shows there is a lot of affordable housing out there and it is selling.

I don’t think anyone is going to be sad to see this year come to a close. It has been a long, long year with mostly bad news every day and on every front. The economy is in the tank. We have had the housing crisis, the mortgage crisis, a financial crisis on Wall Street, an auto industry crisis with a potential bankruptcy of two of the big three auto makers, and now here in the Northeast a weather crisis. One thing that struck me this past weekend when I was out getting supplies at Home Depot and the hardware store (like just about every other person in the Lakes Region) was that for the most part everyone seemed to be coping with the fact that their heat was out, that they were cold, that they couldn’t take a shower, and that they didn’t know when they’d see the power come back on. Most people seemed to have a pretty positive attitude that they’d get through this latest hurdle before Christmas.  I think it is because even though we could do nothing about getting the electricity back on we could take some positive actions and do something about the situation ourselves. We can figure out how to get some heat in the house to stay warm and get some candles or a generator to get the lights on.  So while individually we can’t solve the current national financial crisis, collectively with positive attitudes we can and will get through these tough economic times. Despite what they are saying about 2009 on television and in the newspapers, I’m taking the position that it will be a better year. Doing anything else is like sitting in the cold and dark.

I’d like to thank my clients and customers for a successful year in real estate despite the bad market and I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and prosperous, yes prosperous, New Year. I hope that Santa brings a buyer to everyone that has their home on the market and a 5000 watt generator to everyone else. Ho. Ho, Ho…

Residential Homes Sold November 2008

Report covers the towns of Aton, Barnstead, Belmont, Center Harbor, Gilford, Gilmanton, Laconia, Meredith, Moultonborough, New Hampton, Sanbornton, and Tilton

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 10:29 am and is filed under Lakes Region Home, Market Report Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.