Local real estate market experts, Market Watch LLC, just released their Greater Palm Springs/Coachella Valley Housing Report for December 2016. Some highlights:
Market Watch reports that the median price for Greater Palm Springs/Coachella Valley’s detached homes in December 2016 was $340,000, effectively unchanged from a year ago. They feel that the yearly change in the median price in individual cities shows a generally positive year for detached homes and a slightly negative bias for condominiums. In the detached home market, Desert Hot Springs, with a yearly gain of 15.6%, and Palm Springs, with a gain of 8.1%, continue to be the price leaders in the Valley. In fact, Palm Springs, with a price of $565,000 is now only 5.8% under its 2006 all-time high. On the other end of the spectrum, Rancho Mirage’s median price is still 38.9% off its 2006 all-time high, Palm Desert’s median price is still 35.5% off its 2006 all-time high and Indian Wells’ median price is still 34.3% off its 2006 all-time high.
The median price for Greater Palm Springs/Coachella Valley’s condos was $229,000, an increase of $2,000 in the median price year-over-year, which is a gain of just under 1%. Market Watch’s analysts state that this graph clearly shows the median price is essentially unchanged for the last three years. In fact, the median price is still around 2009 price levels. They speculate that much of this is because about 70% of Valley condo owners are not owner occupants but remote owners; they usually live outside the region and numbers of remote owners are maintaining but not growing.
After a long period of stagnation, Market Watch's analysts feel that a very positive indicator for the housing market is the growing trend in long term sales in both detached homes and condominiums. Looking at the 12-month moving average, condominium sales rose 9% and detached home sales rose 2.8% from last year, for a combined total sales increase of 4.9% for the year. When Market Watch measures the change in the 3-month average of sales, a time period that clearly shows the seasonality of the Valley’s real estate market, they see stronger sales growth than the long term trend by a substantial margin. Detached home sales grew 13% while condo sales grew 15%. This produced a gain of 14% in total sales. Market Watch’s analysts expect that total long term sales over the coming year will rise over 10% from 2016 levels.
The second very positive trend for the housing market is inventory. Inventory on January 1st was 4,585 units compared to 5,092 unit’s last January 1st . Higher sales and lower inventory combined to produce a lower ratio of months of sales. The ratio on January 1st stood at 6.3 months which is one month less than the ratio on January 1st of last year. This positive trend is confirmed by another important metric called days on the market, which is another way to measure low or high inventory. As inventory grows so usually does DOM and vice versa. The current reading of 65 days is twelve days less than the 77 days at the end of last year.
The Market Watch Housing Report is prepared through the sponsorship and cooperation of the Palm Springs Regional Association of Realtors® (PSRAR) and the California Desert Association of Realtors® (CDAR), as a member benefit.