Yes Virginia, the market in Tahoe and Truckee is better!!

Well, it is not quite the end of the year but in anticipation of a couple of busy weeks ahead I thought I would put together this yearly update.  So I ran off the statistics from the Tahoe Sierra Multiple Listing Service and I was pleasantly surprised.  Even though we still have a couple of weeks left in the year (and I know there are some sales yet to be posted), it looks like our market did better this year (2009) than last (2008).  According to the numbers, we sold 777 residential properties in 2008 (single family residences, condos and mobile homes).  This year we sold 887 of the same.  This is a 12% increase overall.

Some of this year’s winners were:  Kings Beach and Tahoe Vista, up 43%, Northshore Lake Tahoe, up 25%, the Westshore of Lake Tahoe, up 29%, Glenshire-Devonshire, up 27% and Tahoe Donner, while only up 13% needs to be mentioned for its sheer volume of units sold — a whopping 325.

That’s the good news.  Here is the reality of the situation.  We all know the old saying by Sir Isaac Newton, “for every action there is a equal and opposite reaction” — well guess what, the sales volume (the total amount of money that passed hands) went down.  In 2008, even with sales units lagging, the sales volume was $626,052,931 whereas so far in 2009 the sales volume is $560,122,073.  The difference in these amounts represents a 14% drop in volume.  If you extrapolate this further, the average sales price in the Truckee Tahoe area dropped 22%, from $631,479 to $805,731.

Now I know that these  average sales price numbers look kind of up there, please remember that our multiple listing service covers a lot of ground.  It includes homes that are priced at $295,000 up the $33,000,000.  It doesn’t take the sale of  too many million dollar properties to skew the scale.