The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors agree to build a multifield sports complex on Belmont Ridge Road in Ashburn just south of Route 7.
Three sports organizations are already signed up to play at the new facility-Loudoun Soccer, Northern Virginia Football Club and the Washington Glory Softball Team.
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The number of resale properties for sale in Ashburn just went back over 500 for the first time this year. This number has slowly been going up since the first of the year and will more than likely continue to increase into the summer months.
The number of properties for sale in the entire county now stands at 2640 after getting as low as 2400 in the beginning of January.
As long as inventory goes up prices will remain suppressed.
Loudoun County assessments came out earlier this month and assessed values went down in most areas of the county. But did they go down enough for your area of the county?
This is the breakdown for the change in prices for the Ashburn area of Loudoun County. This analysis is for the 20147 and 20148 zip codes. It will show you the difference in values for homes sold at the end of 2006 versus the end of 2007.
Two different datasets were used: Homes sold in the month of December and homes settled between December 16th and January 15th. A complete explanation can be found in the first post of this series.
| Ashburn Market Value Analysis | ||||
| Under contract Dec 1 - Dec 31 | 2008 | 2007 | (+/-) | % change |
| All Ashburn | $433,324 | $507,273 | -$73,949 | -14.6% |
| 20147 | $419,218 | $478,606 | -$59,388 | -12.4% |
| 20148 | $451,142 | $572,515 | -$121,373 | -21.2% |
| Settled Dec 16 - Jan 15 | ||||
| All Ashburn | $427,966 | $490,195 | -$62,229 | -12.7% |
| 20147 | $395,073 | $454,611 | -$59,538 | -13.1% |
| 20148 | $479,363 | $575,048 | -$95,685 | -16.6% |
The average price of a house in the two zip codes of Ashburn went down a minimum of 12.4% during the past year. The 20148 zip code was down at least 16%.
Current sales for the Broadlands subdivision have fallen off in the last month and continue a trend established in April. Since the first of April, there have been only 20 homes go under contract in the Broadlands. In the months of March and February there were 18 and 19 sales, respectively.
With actives at 61, current inventory stands at a little over 5 months.
Here is a link to the homes that have sold in Broadlands for the month of May.
http://maps.live.com/?v=2&cid=12AA0FB299532BEC!161&encType=1
Just this afternoon the number of active listings in Ashburn surpassed 500. For the first 3+ months of the year the number of actives had held steady between 400 and 425. As April began the number of new listings started to pick up and sales have not be able to keep pace. This will definitely keep a lid on prices for the spring. The last time the number of actives was more than 500 was before Thanksgiving.
Any sellers who were hoping the spring was going to bring more buyers and maybe some appreciation in value are going to have to wait.
Existing home sales in Ashburn for the first quarter of 2007 were stronger than any area of Loudoun County and Ashburn was the only area that showed an increase in the number of homes sold in Q1 2007 versus Q1 2006. Q1 2006 saw 351 homes go under contract while 372 went under contract in the first three months of 2007. This was an increase of 6%.
The number of homes that were put up for sale in the first quarter of 2007 was 583. This was a decrease of almost 40% versus 2006 and was also the largest drop for any area of Loudoun County.
The increase in units sold coupled with the decrease in listings has not however led to an increase in the average price of a home in Ashburn. The average price of an Ashburn home for the quarter was $475,042 which was down 7.8% from Q1 2006 and virtually flat compared to the Q4 2006 average price of $474,827.
The reason we didn't see prices increase any significant amount was because listings still outpaced sales by 211 units during the first quarter. This means that for every home that sold during the quarter 1.57 new homes were listed. As long as this trend c0ntinues, prices will remain flat.
In the last 3 weeks, the number of homes sold in Ashburn that were on the market for 30 days or less was almost 40% of total sales. On the other hand, almost the same percentage of homes sold were on the market for 6 months or more (37%). Why is this happening?
The short sales cycle for new listings can be attributed to proper pricing (listing price). In the last 4 or 5 months, prices have remains fairly consistent. This has allowed sellers and their agents to make a pretty accurate assessment of current market value and be confident in their analysis. The prices that houses are selling for is no longer a rapidly moving target as it was for the last 4 or 5 years.
The houses that are taking 6 months to sell can be attributed to pressure. These are houses that have been incorrectly priced for one reason or another. After having the market reject their price for 180 plus days, after seeing their neighbors sell and after pleading from their agents to make a price adjustment, the owners have finally come to the realization that perhaps their home isn't worth as much as they thought or hoped.
Interestingly, there is not much difference in the prices these two sets of sellers are getting for their homes. Similar homes in the same neighborhood are fetching very similar prices whether they have languished on the market for months or listed just a couple of weeks.
My partner and I were looking through the listings in Ashburn and we noticed a lot of properties owned or controlled by relocation companies or lenders. So I went through all 203 single family homes for sale in Ashburn and counted the relos and bank owned property. As of today the number is 29 or 14.3% of the market.
That is a huge number compared to almost none a year ago. The good news is the banks will usually hold on for longer than most homeowners. They have deeper pockets. The bad news is they can unload for huge losses and it really doesn't affect them that much. But it does drive down the prices in a particular neighborhood.
Lets hope they don't all dump at the same time.
News sources have been reporting some numbers recently that paint a very gloomy picture for real estate. Just in the last week, MSNBC has run stories that detail the housing slump, plunging construction activity and slowing or falling home sales. This can be very troubling for homeowners especially if they need to sell in the near future.
However, not all of this information is bad news and a lot of the information is too old to be applicable. The problem is news organizations are in the business of selling news and what sells in today's market are the flashy headlines that proclaim doom and gloom. But I'm here to tell you that the worst is behind us and there are some good signs for the future.
One thing to keep in mind is that real estate is local. And by that I mean, any information regarding national numbers, overall trends and industry averages do not always apply to us here in Loudoun County. In fact, most times it doesn't. We are actually about 9 to 12 months ahead of the nation as a whole. That means that if prices are reported as going down nationally for the first time in June 2006, Loudoun prices probably started going down between June and August of 2005.
To get a look at the trends for Loudoun County check out the Northern Virginia Real Estate Guide. There are plenty of charts indicating when the market turned in Loudoun.
But the most important information for predicting what is ahead for the real estate market is leading indicators. Information that tells us where things are likely to go in the future not where we were 3 to 6 months ago.
One of these indicators, which I mentioned in an earlier post is that is the number of units sold this year versus last. In Loudoun County, that indicator has been down 21 straight months. However, in November the drop over last year was only 8%. That is the smallest drop since July of 2005. And in Ashburn this indicator was up for the first time since February of 2005.
Another leading indicator is inventory capacity. This tells us how long it will take to sell the current homes on the market if no other homes came up for sale. It is calculated by dividing the current sales rate per day into the available inventory. In Loudoun as of today that number is approximately 200 days or about 6.5 months. This number got as high as 9 months during the peak of the current buyers market in June.
I will be looking at the current trends during the next two months to give you a better idea of what you can expect for the spring market next year.
Although the month is still not over, units sold for Ashburn this month will be more than November of 2005. As of today there were 91 sales in November in the two Ashburn zip codes (20147, 20148). This is the first month over month increase for Ashburn in 21 months. This bodes well for a stabilization of prices. Sales are not as strong in Sterling or Leesburg but the month isn't over yet. I'll keep you posted.
