“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain
My name is Jay Ferguson and I am one of the owners of the real estate division of Taylor Made Deep Creek Vacations & Sales. I am entering my 19th year in the real estate business here in Garrett County and at Deep Creek Lake.If you are interested, you can click here find out more about me personally and my background.
I will be writing a monthly blog post about our local real estate market, sharing & interpreting statistics and offering some insights into the market as a whole…as I see it. These are my personal thoughts and musings about the market in general and are not intended as anything more specific. And, to be clear, I am an optimistic, glass half-full kind of guy.
Lastly, every stat I reference is based on the official stats published by Bright MLS on or around the 15th of each month. My plan is to give you straightforward stats coupled with my analysis from the front lines and let you interpret what you read in your own way.
January 2020 – Two part stats update.
I will look back on 2019 as a whole first, and then see where we ended up for the month of December 2019.
2019 turned out to be a spectacular year on several fronts, as you can see from the chart below. ALL OF THESE NUMBERS ARE IMPRESSIVE:
-Our total sold volume was up 16% to nearly $190 million dollars county-wide.
-The average sales price was up 3.82% to $348,960
-There were 516 units sold vs 487 in 2018 – that’s an increase of 5.95%. That’s the most robust year we have had in a long time!
-Days on market were lower by 4.1%
-The average list-to-sale price was 90.3%
And for those of you who are curious, there were 126 cash deals were no financing was involved. That’s close to 25% of our transactions for the year. 320 deals used conventional financing and there were approximately 50 deals that were VA, FHA or USDA financing.
December 2019 update:
We finished the month of December with 17 new listings, down from 47 new listings last month.
The specifics:
-There were FAR less new listings in December …17 new listings versus 47 in November. That is much lower than the 5 year average of 30 properties in December.
-Pending sales (homes that went under contract) were down 36.4% – 28 total homes. This is again down from last months 10.2% but its right on the money with the 5 year average.
-Closed sales (homes that actually sold) were up 17.1% from last month, with a total of 48 sales county-wide. That is a bit higher than the 5 year average.
-The total number of active listings is now down to 277 active listings from 340 last month. This may be the lowest inventory number you see all year, as many agreements to sell expire on 12/31.
-The average sold to original listing price (OLP) ratio is down to 85.5% from 87.9% last month. The five year average is 86% and year to date is 90.3%.
-The median sold price was back down to $228,750. This is down 8.5% from last months $250,000. The 5 year average is $240,750. (Jay’s note) *This number is always going to be off month to month. We don’t have a cookie cutter market, as ALL of Garrett County is factored into theses stats. Some months, big dollar lake homes sales skew this number higher and other months. Interested in more specific stats for YOUR property/neighborhood? Drop me an email jay@deepcreekvacations.com
-The average days on market (DOM) was 273, much longer than the 194 days last month.
December is typically an ‘off’ month with so many people focusing on the holidays. The weather was great for skiing and the Wisp was able to open earlier than usual to get a jump on skiing. As I type this, the Wisp is struggling with warm weather – it was in the mid to upper 50’s all week. We had thunderstorms twice this week. Colder temperatures are on the way, though, and snowmaking can resume as early as this evening!
Questions about the market? Whether you are buying or selling, I can put my experience to work for you! Contact me anytime for a free market analysis of any property you may be interested in purchasing or selling!
Jay Ferguson
Co-Owner
Associate Broker
301-501-0420 – cell