Southeast Home Sales 2007 vs 2008.

Hello 2009. 

"What will you bring for the Southeast Texas housing market?"  Time will tell.  But for a moment let's reflect on the past.  2007 was the banner year for home sales in Southeast Texas.  All prior sales numbers were beaten.  New highs were reached.  Then 2008 came along. If you read the paper, watched the news or listened to the "talk on the streets", you might have thought home sales came to a screeching halt in 2008.  However, that was not the case fellow real estate watchers. 

Since numbers don't lie.  Here's a few numbers to consider.

 

10 things the 2007 and 2008 sales numbers tell us:

1. April and July of 2008 had higher sales than the same months of 2007.
2. September 2008 had the lowest number of sales in two years.  Thank you Hurricane Ike!
3. The first quarter of 2008 was off the 2007 pace by about 20%.
4. The second quarter of 2008 was off the 2007 pace by about 9%.
5. 2008 had 85% the number of sales that 2007 had.  85% of the best year ever!  That's not bad considering a Hurricane messed up a whole month of 2008.
6. The stars on the graph represent the quarterly sales totals.
7. The year end total sales for 2007 was 2,491 and in 2008 it was 2,094.
8. The second and third quarter of both years had the most sales actively during the year.
9. The month with the highest number of sales was May 2007 with 270 sales.
10. The month in 2008 with the highest number of sales was July with 239.

For those of you who thought 2008 wasn't a good year for the Southeast Texas housing market, you might have to admit you were wrong.  Not beating the best year ever doesn't mean "bad", it is just not another record.

So back to the original question, "What's in store for 2009?".  With the government working on trying to stimulate the economy and interest rates below 5%, 2009 might just turn out to be a record breaking year for Southeast Texas home sales.  In you've been "sitting on the fence" waiting to buy, now's the time to act!  Wait too much longer and you might find all the good inventory has been bought up by someone else who was "sitting on the fence" with you but decided now is the to buy!