Baldwin County Alabama Coast Residential Real Estate Observations April 2008:

Baldwin County MLS Observations: Real Estate statistics for the Baldwin County, Alabama coastal areas for the month of April: April sales declined 12% To $68,854,345 from $78,144,677 in April, 33% below last year. This may be what a bottom looks like. Sellers still have a ways to go in adjusting their expectations but there are buyers out there, very picky ones for sure. On a unit basis, sales of used houses declined by 14% to 232 vs. 269 last month. New house unit sales declined to 40 from 47 last month (Sect A P 17).

New listings for new houses decreased in April to 81 from 139 in March. Reflecting the long lead time for some developments, (and withdrawn and relisting by frustrated sellers) new listings are running at 2 times the rate of sales of new houses in spite of the now extended sales slump. (Chart Section C Page 1 And Table Sect A P18). Used houses new listings decreased to 884 this month from 978 in March. Net active listings were slightly down for both new and used houses. (See below).

Average sales price for new units increased to $279,471 from $248,710 last month. There were 5 New houses sold over $500,000 in April which is the same as last month. None of the 122 over $900,000 new houses sold. (See Page A-14). The average Used house price increased to $248,601 from $245,521 in March.

There were 5444 used houses active in April, a slight decrease from a 5684 in March. There were 1080 new houses active in April, a decrease from 1188 in March. The Absorption rate for new houses was 16.4 months of inventory for April vs. 16.9 in March.  The Absorption rate for used houses was 22.8 months of inventory for April vs. 22.6 in March.(See Section A Page 17). 

TWB 5/12/2008

*All references to last month numbers are revised, to pick up late entries (made after our prior publication date) to the MLS system.