The purpose of this post is to give everyone an update of the market statistics from July 2009 along with a look at 2009 overall. On the surface it looks like the economy has changed for the better so I think it’s a good time to look at the numbers. To begin we’re gonna look at the numbers for the entire market and then we will break them down by price range to really get a good idea of what is going on.

2009 2008 %INC/DEC
Total # of Listings [Month] 1523 1799 -15%
Total # of Listings YTD 10870 12363 -12%
Total # of Expired Listings [Month] 487 522 -7%
Total # of Expired Listings YTD 3713 3022 23%
Total # of Sales [Month] 911 949 -4%
Total # of Sales YTD 5244 6020 -13%
Total # of Closed Sales [Month] 1032 1098 -6%
Total # of Closed Sales YTD 5244 6020 -13%


The numbers are pretty interesting and even though the underlying feeling lately has been pretty positive the numbers show that the market is down from 2008. One explanation for this could be that the fact that May to August is always the busiest time of the year because most families want to move before School starts. So that means that the outlook was positive because for example when you look at the production in July compared to March, July is higher but that would most likely be the case any other year.

Even though sales are down in London this year we do not have to much too worry about it because here in London home prices are fairly stable. In a good year prices usually go up about 5%, thus in a bad year prices do not go down too much. One of the main reasons as to why prices dropped so much in the U.S. was because places like Florida would have houses raising in value by 30% in one year when nothing really changed in the market. So of course when values are raising at such a high rate for no real reason when the market goes sour they are going to have larger drops in values as well.

These are all general trends but to really get a good idea of what is happening in the market we should look at the activity in each price range. Here is a break down of sales for the July and the year to date in 2009 compared to July and the year to date in 2008.

Month Year[2009] Month Year[2008]
Under $80,000 – $130,000 157 /-10% 897 /+9% 175 822
$130,000 – $ 174,999 217 /-10% 1343 /-13% 243 1552
$175,000 – $199,999 87 /0 512 /-14% 87 596
$200,000- $249,999 206 /+3% 1083 /-9% 200 1202
$250,000- $299,999 108 /+9% 614 /-13% 99 709
$300,000- $349,999 56 /-21% 313 /-7% 71 338
$350,000- $499,999 57 /+2% 352 /-13% 56 404
$500,000+ 23 /+28% 130 /-13% 18 151

The numbers here are very interesting overall when we look at the numbers for the year to date; only the lowest price range has had an increase in sales while all the other prices ranges have gone down. It is tough to say for sure why the lowest range has seen an increase in sales as it could be benefitting from government programs geared towards new home buyers. Since prices are down people may see more value then in years past and there may be more power of sales. The sale of each home has so many different factors which determine why, for what price and when a house sells – it isn’t even fair to pin point it to one reason or another.

When we look at July sales broken down by price range again we have some interesting numbers that are not easy to explain. In some of the price ranges (mostly the higher end price) we see an increase compared to last July. Again it is too difficult to assign just one reason for this but one thing we did notice from open houses is that alot of the same people were coming through and waiting for a better deal, which is fine, but if you have decided to move this year, and usually every family with children would like to get into their new home before school starts, how long can you wait? This may have been the month people decided it was time to make a decision. This is just an idea I am positive there are many other reasons why people purchased when they did.

In a couple weeks we will do another update with August Statistics – it will be interesting to see if some of these trends continued. If you have any questions or comments let us know.