2017 Has Been a Good Year for Real Estate

Since the year is just about over, I thought it would be a good idea to tell you a little bit about how the market did over the course of the year.
As the year draws to a close, many of you have asked me how the real estate market did in 2017. I have good news to report to you about that. Stock values like the Dow Jones Index, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 have increased by about 25%, and the real estate market is doing well also.

In the market that I’m tracking for you, in 2016, we had an average price of $550,000 with an average square footage of about 1,780 square feet. Rounded off, it’s about $310 per square foot. In 2017, the average price is now $604,500 with an average square footage of 1,885 square feet, which amounts to about $327 per square foot. Between this year and last year, we saw about a 5.55% increase in the average price.
Based on this information, a person with an FHA loan who put 3.5% down (roughly $19,250) has seen their home value increase by another $30,000. This is about a 157% increase on the equity that they have on their home.
For a person who’s going for a more traditional approach, if you put 20% down (based on the average price, this would be about $110,000), that same $30,000 increase in equity gave them a 27% return on the equity, which is very good.


All in all, it’s been a very good year for our market.

The days on market has decreased from the 2016 average of 90 days to 66 days, which is in line with an observation I made in my August report. All in all, it’s been a very good year for our market, and I expect to have even better news come the new year.
If you have any questions about the market or real estate in general, please feel free to give me a call or send an email. Until next time, I wish all of you to have a Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy, prosperous 2018.