Louisville Kentucky Real Estate

Louisville Homes Values Decline in 4th Quarter 2007!!

Now that I have your attention, lets look at the situation a little more carefully, and calmly.

Yes, it is true that the Louisville KY newspaper The Courier-Journal recently did an article about the declining Louisville real estate market that saw declines in the last quarter of 2007.  They went on to say that in the 4th quarter of 2007, Louisville homes dropped 3.3% to a median price of $133,000.

My response to the declining Louisville real estate market:  So what?

Newspapers want to do 1 thing:  Report the news (and get sales!).  If its not an interesting story, people won’t read or care about it.  So, its easy to create a dramatic effect by looking at a microscopic view of things.

If, however, you look at all of 2007, and the report prepared by the Greater Louisville Association of REALTORs, Louisville homes saw an increase in value overall.  Albeit it was small at less than 0.5%, its still a positive number - with a median price of $139,000 across all of 2007.

So, the perception of the Louisville real estate market being in a downward spiral is an overly negative, and incorrect view on things in my opinion.  The market has been nearly flat, with small positive gains overall.  Which is substantially better than many other parts of the country.  If you look at things comparitively from a national perspective, home sales are down 21% compared to the 4th quarter of 2006.  Kentucky on the other hand saw a 14% decline in volume.  If you look at some of the other states like Nevada, they were down a whopping 44%. New Mexico, Oregon, and Arizona were all down 37-39% each.

That being said, if you recall the other article regarding Louisville Homes, its clearly an excellent time for persons to buy.  There’s an old saying, perception is reality.  And it holds true for many people.  They keep hearing about how bad the real estate market is on a national level - and they begin to look for reasons why their own local market is having a tough time as well.  When, its really not.

Yes, it is true that market times are taking longer for many Louisville homes.  This is primarily due to an overabundance of inventory.  But, the same rate of Louisville homes sales are occuring.

Theres another old saying:  Money is made in real estate when you buy it.  Not when you sell it.  This is in reference that if you buy the property as a good deal - you are almost assured of making money on the back end when you do try to go and sell it.

Now is the time to buy.  Not because of actual market conditions from a depressed value.  But because of public perception, and all of the economic indicators for the Louisville real estate market are there that provide for a strong growth of appreciation for 2008.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Shelbyville KY Real Estate, Louisville Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.