Home Sales for Picayune and Pearl River County. MS

The chart above shows the Residential Home Sale activity for Pearl River County Board of Realtors, over the past 3 years. Since we are at the end of the 3rd Quarter, I wanted to give everyone an idea of what the market is doing in our area.

I have created this chart to compare the past three years of home sales. The blue bar represents 2007, red represents 2008, and green represents 2009. As you can see, our sales over the past two years have been significantly lower than 2007. What's interesting to see is that there has been a drop in the number of house sales between 2008 and 2009, so far this year. Using the existing numbers for 2009, and calculating if we did the same amount of sales this next quarter as we did during the last quarter of 2008, we are at a 7% decline in home sales.

The good news is that new listings in 2009 declined from the 2008 numbers with 734 homes being listed in 2008 and 695 listed in 2008. Unfortunately it hasn't been a significant difference, and there is still an over-supply of listings this year, maintaining a buyer's market.

Some of the issues that we have faced this year that have impacted the ability for buyers to purchase homes has been the hike in credit score requirements for FHA loans, and lower appraisals due to the new HVCC (Home Vaulation Cope of Ethics).

It's important to remember that Real Estate is "local", meaning that each area is affected by a variety of factors and may not be at the same level of growth or decline that other areas are experiencing. While there is news of some areas starting to move in a positive direction, we have not seen that in our local market. It is my hope that the last quarter of this year will change that perspective.

If you have any questions about this information, please contact me via my website at www.prchomes.com.