May bounces back strongly

Summit County real estate sales staged a strong recovery in May after an April slump. May dollar volume rose 13% over the 2013 month which itself had been up 18% from 2012. Sequentially, dollar volume rose 53% to $91.6 million. That was the strongest May performance since 2008.
Transaction volume was also up sharply both year-over-year and sequentially. With 174 transactions, volume rose 10% from the year ago period and 48% from April of 2014.
Year-to-date, total transactions are still down 2% at 595 but dollar volume is actually up 6% to $304.4 million.
With transactions down and total dollar volume up, average selling prices (ASPs) would seem to be rising. Indeed, year-to-date, the ASP for single family properties has risen to $851,387 , a 10% increase from this time a year ago. Multi-family sales are averaging $369,036 up 9.2%. While some of that rise represents increases in price, it also reflects more activity at the upper end of the market. At this point in 2013, 75% of the transactions had been consummated at under $600,000 and only 7.7% were over $1 million. To date this year, only 71.7 % (69.7 in May) were under $600,000 and almost 12% were above the $1 million mark including 10 transactions over $2 million.