New River Valley real estate market shows a healthy 2016
Summer is almost over, but with the end of summer goes the New River Valley Mid-Year 2016 Nest Market Report. The Nest Report is our quarterly look at the real estate market for the previous quarter—the highs, the lows, the good and the bad. No sales speak, just the facts, ma’am.
You can see individual areas of the market in the attached report, but a quick look at the whole of the New River Valley real estate market shows a healthy 2016. As an agency, we certainly felt an increase in buyer and seller activity, and the numbers seem to bear that out.
In the New River Valley MSA the total number of sales were up 3%, median home prices had risen to $174,000, and there was less inventory on the market. Translation: people were buying and selling at a faster clip in 2016 versus last year at the same time, and homes were staying on the market less time. Individual areas of the NRV were up in terms of number of homes sold—Floyd County, for instance, saw a 45% increase – but in general a stable single-digit increase in activity shows that the market is moving along nicely.
With any good thing lies an abundance of caution, as well. This year is, as you know, a presidential election year, and election years historically make the real estate markets a little uncertain. While the first half of the year has seen strong sales, we do expect some wavering in the latter half of the year, as home buyers and sellers watch with trepidation—or excitement—at what this election will bring. The likelihood is that there may be small incremental changes, plus or minus, as we head toward November, but we don’t expect major adjustments to the market as a whole.