A mid-year review of the Dane County single family home market

Here's how the Dane County single family home market fared during the first 6 months of 2008 against the same time period last year. This data includes homes only (no condos). All data comes from the South Central Wisconsin MLS.

• Year-to-date median price: $225,000 in 2008 vs $227,000 in 2007, down .9%
• Sold listings: 2,107 in 2008 vs 2,698 in 2007, down 21.9%
• Listing success rate: 53% in 2008 vs 55.1% in 2007, down 2.1%
• Days on market (sold listings): 89 days in 2008 vs 76 days in 2007, up by 13 days
• Days on market (expired listings): 166 days in 2008 vs 153 days in 2007, up by 13 days

Here's a comparison of single family home inventory, July 31st of 2008 versus July 31st of 2007:

• Active listings: 3,293 listings on 7/31/2008 vs 3,338 listings on 7/31/2007, lower by 45
• Months of inventory: 9 months on 7/31/2008 vs 7.9 months on 7/31/2007, higher by 1.1 months

When will the pendulum start to shift back to the seller? When sales start to pick up and inventory begins to recede in a meaningful way. Until that time, we can expect to see high marketing times and slightly positive to slightly negative price growth, depending on location.

We'll cover how the total required marketing time has changed for the average Dane County home seller in our next post. After that we'll provide a mid-year review of the Dane County condo market.

For more information on the Dane County single family home market, you can visit our year-to-date snapshot here.