Large commercial sale saves January

On the surface, January real estate sales showed only modest declines from a year ago with total volume dropping 2% to $52.2 million. Transaction volume was down a more substantial 6% to 102 transactions. These numbers, however, are not an accurate depiction of what occurred in the residential market as a large commercial sale ($7.25 million) padded the numbers substantially. Looking at residential sales alone, transaction volume was down 6% but dollar volume dropped nearly 20%.
The primary contributor to the drop was due a dearth of sales at the very high end. Last January there were seven sales over $1.5 million totaling almost $13 million dollars. This year, there was one sale at $1,580,000.
With the lack of high-end sales, the average selling price for single family homes dropped from $974,971 of last January and $751,240 for all of last year to $736,719. In contrast, pricing for multi-family properties rose from $311,640 a year ago and $344,578 all of last year to $347,961.
Land sales were about flat year over year (7 vs 8) but the average selling price did decline to $276,643 below both the January 2013 average of $342,825 and the full year average of $324,137.