The St Charles County Zip Code With The Hottest Real Estate Market

Which Zip Code in St Charles County is home to the hottest real estate market today? Well, it depends…

  • 63376 based upon the zip code where homes are selling the fastest
  • 63376 based upon where the inventory of homes for sale is the lowest
  • 63367 based upon trending home sales
  • 63341 based upon home price increases over the past year

I could go on, but the point I wanted to illustrate here is that there is no one piece of data, or one list or chart that is going to accurately depict what the “best” market is, or even the condition of the real estate market.  To accurately determine what a particular local real estate market is like one really must examine the health of the market looking at many different factors.  Additionally, what is a “good” market to one person, may not be good for another, so it is also important to understand the wants and needs of the person asking the question.

It is for the aforementioned reasons, as well as others I won’t elaborate on here, why, even though I love technology, automation and “platforms” (today’s buzz word in the tech world), I think real estate agents continue to be an absolutely necessary part of the home buying and selling process today and will remain so for many years to come. A qualified, professional agent will gather and analyze data such as I’ve presented here, then apply it to their clients’ situation and then determine the best price, course of action, etc.

The other point I hoped to make here was to encourage home buyers, sellers and investors not to put too much weight on one piece of data being reported in the media, but instead seek out a professional that can provide you with a comprehensive view of the market.

But, I digress, so back to the question, what is the hottest market in St Charles County today?

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St Louis’ Fastest Selling Neighborhoods

If you want to buy a home today you have to be quick, especially in some neighborhoods where the demand is so high and inventory so low that many of the homes sell within a day or two of hitting the market.  There are many ways to determine what are the hot neighborhoods in St Louis, but for the purposes of this article, I’m going to look at the average days on market of active listings to determine  cities in the St Louis where homes are selling the fastest.

As the table below shows, Shrewsbury is at the top of the list where the average home for sale has been on the market for under a month, followed by it’s not so distant neighbor, Crestwood where active listings have been for sale just over a month.

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The Hottest Real Estate Markets In America

Realtor.com just released it’s list of the 20 hottest real estate markets in America and the top two markets are in Texas, with Waco at number one and Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington at number two.  Realtor.com’s rankings were based upon the number of listing views relative to the number of listings on Realtor.com.

20-hottest-markets

Source: REALTOR.com

What are going to be the hot St Louis real estate markets in 2013?

Saint Louis Realtor, Dennis Normanst-louis-real-estate-realtor-dennis-normanI don’t know that “hot” comes to mind when I think about any St Louis real estate market today, however, relative to the rest of the market, I think I can identify some St. Louis real estate markets that I feel are poised to perform better in 2013 than other St Louis markets.  Below are my charts showing some key market data for the top markets. Included in my data are 4 pieces of information that I think are key to determining the health of a local real estate market:

  • Home prices – I show what prices have done over the past 12 months. For a “healthy” market we would expect prices to be generally on the rise however, we don’t want them increasing at too fast of rate as, like we learned from the bubble, this is not good.
  • Inventory of homes for sale – Excess inventory of homes for sale put a damper on the market for some time and, as the basic law of supply and demand dictates, generally brings prices down…therefore I’m looking for inventories that have declined to near normal levels.
  • Days on market – another indicator of supply and demand in a market….for a market to be healthy we would expect to see homes sold within a reasonable period of time
  • Market Action Index – This gives us a quick snapshot of the health of the market focusing primarily on the balance of supply and demand. A “30” would be a balanced market not favoring buyers or sellers, above a 30 (up to a maximum of 60) indicates a “hot” market favoring sellers, below 30 (down to a low of 0) indicates a “cold” market and favors buyers. After what the real estate market has been through over the past 5 years, anything in the mid 20’s is great and a 30 is a real eye opener today.

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Where are the hottest real estate markets in St. Louis?

saint-louis-real-estate-dennis-normanAs you may imagine, I spend a lot of time talking about real estate with people.  Some of the most common questions I hear is “how’s the market”, “where’s the best place to buy” and “what markets are hot“.  These are all questions that,  in the firm I’m a partner in (MORE, Realtors), we go to great expense and effort to provide answers to.  We pride ourselves on having the most current and accurate market data as well as in our ability to dissect the data, apply it to the local market and to a clients situation or transaction to insure it’s a successful transaction from all aspects.

With this in mind, we have just introduced 3 new reports that I think many people will find interesting and informative, one of which (shown below) is a real-time chart that shows the “hottest” real estate markets in St. Louis. Continue reading “Where are the hottest real estate markets in St. Louis?

Best Real Estate Markets in the U.S? Nine of Ten Zips are in California

Dennis Norman

Multiple Offers and Homes Selling for prices ABOVE list price? Is this a reprint of a post from 2005?

Nope. Believe it or not, this is exactly what was in a report released this morning by Zip Realty. The report is based upon home sales activity in the second quarter of this year and says that, despite slowdowns in home sales across the country, California is still the nation’s hottest spot for home buying activity.

California was home to 91 out of the country’s 100 “hottest” zip codes in terms of home sales during the quarter. Zip Realty’s definition of a “hot” market is one in where “homes were selling on average for most above list price“. So being the cynic that I can sometimes be, and, seeing how economists and reporters are constantly “playing with” stats to make them illustrate their point (I would never do this of course:) ) I guess from this report one could instead say that more California home owners under-price their homes more than anywhere else in the U.S. But let’s just stick with the “glass is half-full” approach and say the California market is hot.

Highlights from the report:

  • Berkeley, CA 94703 is the country’s “hottest” zip code with homes selling on average for almost 8 percent above the asking price.
  • Winchester, CT 06098 was the nations “coldest” zip code, with homes selling there on average 30 percent under list price.
  • ZIP codes in California, and specifically the Bay Area, remain the “hottest” for buyer demand, including ZIP codes in Berkeley, Oakland and San Jose. See the chart below for the full list of the country’s ten hottest ZIP codes.
  • The country’s “coldest markets” have warmed slightly since Q2 of 2009 — with homes in the country’s 10 coldest ZIP codes selling for an average of 18 percent below asking price in Q2 of this year, as compared to an average of 22 percent below asking price in Q2 2009.
  • High-end housing markets nationwide continue to offer relative bargains for buyers. For example, in Miami’s Palm Beach (33480), buyers paid an average of around $1.1 million for a home in Q2, an average of $232,492 below list price. In Cape Cod’s Osterville (02655), homes sold on average for 16 percent below asking price, or an average of $180,437 under asking.
  • According to the total number of home searches on Zip Realty, Phoenix and its surrounding neighborhoods continue to be the most popular searched areas in the country.