Good News, Bad News: Kansas Home Sales Rise 5% But Sale Prices Fall 8%

Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

My Kansas Association of Realtors (KAR) report on January’s real estate market indicates the volume of home sales is picking up steam. Overall in the state of Kansas, home sales (closings) rose 5.6% in January 2011 compared with January of 2010. This is impressive when you consider that 2009’s figure was inflated by the home buyer tax credit. This market improvement outpaced the national market improvement of 5.3% and these figures are promising both locally and nationally.

There’s still too many homes on the market however, leaving 13.3 months of inventory in the state of Kansas. The months of inventory was calculated using the number of January home sales and dividing that figure into the 17,805 listings that were for sale at the end of January. With still too much supply for demand, homes sellers saw their average sales prices fall from around $160,000 in January 2010 to around $147,000 January of this year. That’s a significant 8% fall in home prices across the state.

Looking closely at our local market in Johnson County Kansas, 321 homes were sold (closed) in January. This was virtually unchanged from the 328 home sales in Johnson County in January 2010. Comparing this January’s sales rate to the amount of inventory currently on the market, we find there’s 11.1 months of inventory available. This amount of inventory indicates a clear buyer’s real estate market in Johnson County Kansas and anyone in the market to make a move should contact us to see some of the great Johnson County Kansas homes for sale.