Happy New Year everybody! 2013 is here and 2012 is now in the record books. Today, I'm going to open the Marco Island MLS record book and share some stats with you on what can only be described as an incredible year. Prices are up. Volume is up. Spirits are up. The market has turned around solidly.
Over the last few years, we all have been attempting to read the tea leaves to determine when the bottom of the market had been finally reached. From early 2006 until 2009, we watched the Florida real estate market free-fall. Prices plummeted. Foreclosures skyrocketed. There seemed to be no bottom. Finally in mid-2009, the free-fall subsided and prices have started to stabilize slightly but still were creeping lower. Any tiny spike was proclaimed
It's August 2012 and we're just a few months from another presidential election. Of course, nowadays, there are other factors that are strongly influencing home prices besides the upcoming election. Nevertheless, I thought it might be interesting to see what influence pending elections had on real estate prices, historically.
Well, election years, both presidential and mid-term, are bad for price appreciation. The uncertainty of the future causes people to sit tight and wait. In these big election years, U.S. home prices averaged 5.2% gains per year. In non-election years the average gain has been 5.8% since 1969. When you look at median prices, you get similar results. Non-election years outperformed election years handily: 6.3% annual gains
Happy New Year everybody! 2013 is here and 2012 is now in the record books. Today, I'm going to open the Marco Island MLS record book and share some stats with you on what can only be described as an incredible year. Prices are up. Volume is up. Spirits are up. The market has turned around solidly.
