Good Williamsburg Realtor in Williamsburg
Updated 7-20-10      © 2010 Bob Gasink LLC

Williamsburg Real Estate Market Graphs -- Q4 2009
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Williamsburg Real Estate Trends and Analysis
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Bob Gasink is Associate Broker with Long & foster Realtors, 4655-101 Monticello Avenue, Williamsburg, VA 23188
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Prices rising again?
  • This graph shows Williamsburg home values by calendar quarter in $/sf (lot included) for Zip Codes 23185 and 23188 (the places you'd write "Williamsburg, VA" on the envelope). One quarter under the influence of a federal tax credit is not enough to claim a reversal in a long trend.  But, reversals always begin with one data element, right?


        Click on the graph to see the full sized version:
What about home prices in some of our Williamsburg communities? 
  • This graph shows Ford's Colony home values by year in $/sf (lot included). Contrary to what we hear, the bottom never fell out of the market in even our more expensive neighborhoods. 
  • Consumer confidence remains low nationally, and the somewhat low sales rate impacts our sellers adversely.  But not so adversely as to prevent one more example that home prices may be beginning to firm up.


        Click on the graph to see the full sized version:
Average Price of Williamsburg Homes Sold

  • This graph shows the average price of Williamsburg homes sold by calendar quarter.
  •  The Federal new homebuyer tax credit has been in effect for recent periods, and may have caused additional activity in lower priced market segments.   Many homebuyers in the program might have purchased anyway, but the attached graph remains rooted in reality.


        Click on the graph to see the full sized version:


Williamsburg Home Values vs the S&P 500
  • Speaking of the people at S&P, this graph shows the value of Williamsburg real estate vs. the S&P 500 stock average for the calendar years from 2002 to 2009.  It's similar in concept to the graphs provided with mutual fund annual reports.   A home in a desirable area remains a valuable asset with remarkably resilient long term performance, all considered.  Home values shown  are computed from monthly average $/sf data from closed sales in zip codes 23185 and 23188 as reported in the Williamsburg Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service, and the S&P data are the end of month S&P 500 closing prices as reported on Yahoo.com.
  • The S&P500 is one of the most reliable stats for measuring consumer confidence, and consumer confidence is one of the most important factors in buyer behavior.  Continuing year to date weakness in the S&P 500 remains a strong factor in our local real estate market.

        Click on the graph to see the full sized version:
Williamsburg Home Sales Rate Improving.  But how much of this is the federal tax credit?
  • Unbelievable as it may seem, Q1 and Q2 of 2010 are the first quarters in FIVE YEARS to show higher unit sales than the same quarter in the year before. 
  • Analysis of the contracts written suggests that Q2 of 2010 offers signs of real improvement. 
  • We remain  in a very buyer-friendly market condition, because Unit Sales are still low due to the difficulties in selling houses in major US real estate markets elsewhere.  Rent the darned thing and come on down!
  • Unbelievable as it seems, Q1 and Q2 of 2010 are the first quarters in FIVE YEARS to show higher unit sales than the same quarter in the year before. 

        Click on the graph to see the full sized version:


On Drs. Case and Schiller:
Median Schmedian!
  • There's a lot of real estate misinformation out there.  The Internet delivers it to you at the speed of light.  
  • The Case-Schiller Index, treasured by Standard and Poors and revered everywhere your home values are contemplated, is computed for major metropolitan areas around the country and stands as the gold standard for measuring real estate trends.  It is never questioned as they publish  "Real estate Down another 7% in Q1".   Media articles rarely tell you if they are talking about sales in units, individual home prices, or sales totals for the properties closed in a given period (and often, I wonder if they even know the answer themselves as they dash off a story in haste to beat a deadline).
  • Case-Schiller uses median home prices.  The median home price is actually the sale price of the single closing which happens to fall in the middle of the bunch of homes sold in a given place and time period.  In Williamsburg, a market very important to us if not "major" on a national scale, moving the median up or down by just one house moves a monthly median by thousands of dollars, often $5000 or more.  In other words, it is possible for any one sale to move the median by a couple percent in a market that has 50 sales in a month, depending on whether it lands above or below the median.  The smaller the market, the more unstable analysis based on medians becomes.
  • The least expensive properties are over represented in analyses based on medians, because sales activity is usually higher at the lower end of the market.  When we are stressed economically (and have federal first time home buyer incentives) the lower end of the market is particularly active.  Five condo units in a building that happened to be finished in the same month could appear in the newspaper with the headline "Williamsburg Homes Down 10%." 
  • I'll cheerfully allow Drs Case and Shiller to explain their methodology, and I'll explain mine: You get more stable, more repeatable, and more reliable real estate data by looking at average $/square foot numbers than anything you can do with medians, because some compensation is built in for the sizes of homes that have been sold (you must have data on square feet to divide with, of course). 
  • The example on the right compares April 2009 to April 2010 in Williamsburg.  For those reporting from a Case-Schiller perspective, the headline might have read about Williamsburg property values dropping another 8%, when the reality is only about a percent and a half.  The vast majority of the difference is explained by relatively higher market activity among smaller homes (influenced in this case by expiring federal tax credits to homebuyers). 

Click on the illustration to see the full sized version