These numbers only tell you part of the story. You also need to look at how long properties have been on the market. According to MLSPin, here are the average Days On Market for Winchester Homes:

Single family homes: 107
Condos: 112
Multi family homes: 61

Want to take a look back in time? Here’s what was happening in the Winchester real estate market in March.

When: Tuesday, September 22nd from 7:00 – 9:00 PM
Where: Medford Fire Station 5
Zero Medford Street (at the intersection of Medford Street and Main Street)

Each spring and fall I team up with a local real estate attorney, John Masciarelli, and we offer a free seminar to the public to help educate people about what to expect if you decide to sell your property. John and I discuss marketing, the legal aspects of selling, current market conditions and leave plenty of time for your questions.

Learn What To Expect In This Market When Selling Your

* SINGLE FAMILY HOME * MULTI-FAMILY * CONDO * INVESTMENT PROPERTY

John Masciarelli, A local real estate attorney and I will discuss:

• Foreclosures and Short Sales
• How Do We Determine Value?
• Can I Sell My Property Without Paying Capital Gains Taxes?
• How Do We Prepare Our Home For Sale?
• How Do We Sell Our Investment Property With Tenants?

For those who pre-register: we will review the most recent sales in your area and discuss how these sales impact your property selling plans. Sign up by September 21st by calling (781) 446-9720 or email me. Please include your property address if you’d like to be included in the area market analysis.

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There are a wide variety of condos in each city. They range from small associations in converted 2 or 3 family houses to high rise condo buildings like Station Landing which is a city within a city.

Now if you’re thinking of selling a condo in Somerville, dont’ be discouraged by the fact that there are 11 months of inventory on the market right now. That figure shows how long it would take for every condo currently for sale in Somerville to sell. Some of the units are so overpriced, they aren’t truly on the market (IMHO of course.) The condos that are priced right, will sell. I closed on a condo in Somerville this week that I sold in 38 days.

The same hold true in Medford. Although the average days on the market for condos in the city is 115, if you price your condo right and market it well, you can sell much fast. I sold this Medford condo in 11 days for its full asking price.

Whether you sell or sit on the market comes down to the basics – location, condition, price and marketing.

* Source MLSPin

Sometimes seeing all of the numbers at once can be a bit overwhelming, so this chart breaks out the number of month of inventory of single family homes for sale in each city:

Not surprising the cities with the highest price tags, Cambridge and Winchester, have the most number of months of inventory already on the market. Looking at months of inventory help you really narrow in on what’s happening in a real estate market because it factors in demand, not just numbers of homes for sale or average days on the market.

When: Monday, April 6th from 7:30 – 9:30 PM
Where: Medford Fire Station 5
Zero Medford Street (at the intersection of Medford Street and Main Street)

Each spring and fall I team up with a local real estate attorney, John Masciarelli, and we offer a free seminar to the public to help educate people about what to expect if you decide to sell your property. John and I discuss marketing, the legal aspects of selling, current market conditions and leave plenty of time for your questions.

Learn What To Expect In This Market When Selling Your
* SINGLE FAMILY HOME* MULTI-FAMILY * CONDO* INVESTMENT PROPERTY

John Masciarelli, A local real estate attorney and I will discuss:

• Foreclosures and Short Sales
• How Do We Determine Value?
• Can I Sell My Property Without Paying Capital Gains Taxes?
• How Do We Prepare Our Home For Sale?
• How Do We Sell Our Investment Property With Tenants?

For those who pre-register: we will review the most recent sales in your area and discuss how these sales impact your property selling plans. Sign up by September 15th by calling (781) 446-9720 or email me. Please include your property address if you’d like to be included in the area price round up.

As I’ve mentioned before in my blog, Winchester doesn’t have many multi family homes, so if you’re not familiar with the area, don’t be surprised that so few of them sell.

Single Family Homes – 132 Days
Condos – 147 Days
Multi Family Homes – 134 Days

Let’s compare these figures to what was happening in the city in early December. This will help us compare the fall market (reflected in the December figures) versus the winter market which is what’s showing in today’s latest stats.

The biggest changes we see is the average sales prices of properties in Winchester. The average price of a single family house in Winchester has dropped over $61,000 while the average sales price of a condo in the city has risen by over $69,000.

Also the absorption rates (the amount of months it would take for the amount of demand in the market to buy up all of the existing properties in no more were to come available for sale) are much longer, but this is normally just a reflection of the time of year. Between the holidays and bad weather, we normally see housing inventory taking longer to sell in the winter.

It is now officially spring, so stay tuned to my next blog post about Winchester where we’ll start to see the effects of the spring market.

Winchester’s housing inventory is primarily made up of single family homes. As you can see from the chart above, both the single family homes and condos in the city are still selling in an average time frame and the real estate market for these properties is pretty much at equalibrium. Winchester doesn’t have many multi family homes (at least those that haven’t been converted into condos during the past few years). Unlike most of the surrounding communities where multi family homes sell for more than single family homes, the reverse is true in Winchester and the numbers are showing us that it’s still a buyers’ market for multi family homes in 01890.

The MBTA has a wonderful site that lets you put in any address and see what the options are for taking public transportation.

Maybe public transportation just isn’t right for you,but you’re still trying to determine whether or not it makes sense for you to move closer to work. Check out the Commuting Calculator which will help you decide if it makes more sense to buy a house in a more expensive area that’s closer to work or to buy a house with a longer commute that costs less. You can plug in the potential distances from work, gas prices and more. The calculator will help you figure out which scenario makes more sense for you.

Absorption rate is a way to look at the number of properties currently on the market and then using the number of recent sales, allows you see how long it would take for every property currently on the market to sell if no new properties became available for sale.

Here are the current figures:

A real estate market is in equilibrium when there is 4-5 months of inventory for sale. Less than that and you’re in a seller’s market (kudos to Arlington for hitting that sweet spot!) and more than 5 months and you’re in a buyer’s market.

Please keep in mind that this is just an indicator. Malden currently has 9 months of inventory on the market, yet in the past few weeks, I’ve put 2 houses in Malden on the market and sold both in a matter of days with multiple offers. Houses aren’t commodities because each one is different, each one is priced differently and each seller has different motivations.

It’s time, once again, to update you on what’s happening in the local real estate market. One of the key factors I look at is absorption rates.

Absorption rate is a way to look at the number of properties currently on the market and then using the number of recent sales, allows you see how long it would take for every property currently on the market to sell if no new properties became available for sale.

It’s been about 6 weeks since we last looked at city-wide absorption rates together and the numbers have slowed down, but keep in mind that it takes on average 2 months for a property to close, so these numbers are more reflective of the state of the market in mid winter.

Also, notice that Winchester has significantly less properties for sale than another other city in the chart, yet it would take more time for the market to buy up all of the properties for sale in Winchester than in Medford. This shows you why you just can’t look the number of properties for sale to see what’s going on in a city.