Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

When it was reported about a month ago that April home sales in Kansas had risen more than 40% from the previous April, I was very impressed. Although the news had to be taken with a grain of salt – because it was tax credit fueled – I was still looking forward to seeing some more tax credit fueled sale’s figures for May. Well the figures are out and the party continues with news that Kansas home sales were up more than 20% in May 2010 over May 2009.

This is good news no doubt, but not as impressive as April’s report was compared to the nationally sales figures. In April, the increase in the sales rate from the previous year in Kansas was almost double that of the comparable national sales rate. But in May the increase in the Kansas sales rate was much more in line with what’s going on nationally — a 22.6% increase locally in Kansas compared to 19.2% nationally. The raw numbers, as reported by my Kansas Association of Realtors (KAR), shows there were 3,355 homes sold this May, compared to 2,737 in May 2009.

KAR reports there’s 5.6 months of inventory on the market, which is a slight improvement over April’s report of 5.7 months of inventory. Before there was an extension to the deadline for tax credit closings to occur, many close dates were set for mid to late June. So I expect that when June’s figures are release those will be better than last year as well. The extension provided for closings may also lead to higher sales rates when the July and August stats are reported down the road. In other news from the May report, the average sales price in Kansas was $157,822. This is a decrease from the $161,928 average sale’s price in May 2009.  Taking an isolated look at the Johnson County Kansas real estate market, there were 935 home sales in May of this year, which was a 22% increase over May 2009.

Posted by Jason A. Brown