In reviewing some home sales numbers obtained from the Wisconsin realtors Association at years end for Dane County Wisconsin real estate, the area including Madison and it's immediate surrounding area I noticed a number of similarities to the real estate sales in the rest of Wisconsin. I'll publish the actual reported totals when they are available as not all sales may have been reported as of Jan 26th, the day I ran these stats. But from the numbers that I was able to obtain it appears that the number of home sales for 2010 was down about 9% from that of 2009, in the Madison and Dane County Wisconsin area. With the year to date for 2010 being 4,987 homes sold in this area copared to 5,422 for 2009. Similarly to much of Wisconsin, the totals were skewed somewhat with higher than usual sales in the first half of the year with about 61% of the annual totals occuring from January through June. In most years, the total for the first half of the year tends to be closer to 50% or less of the annual total for the first six months of the year. The increase in first half of the year sales was almost certainly due to the tax credit that was available for purchases made during that time.
I think more importantly than the number of sales is the fact that home prices seem to be doing well for the Madison and Dane County area with early numbers indicating a roughly 3.4% increase in the median home sales price for the year for this area.
A favorable employment picture I think is key to maintaining home values and ultimately the overall numbers of homes sold. Since the Madison area's employment picture tends to be better than many areas of the nation or even within the state, we seem to be "holding our own" and although the real estate market is not as robust as we've seen in recent years, it appears that perhaps the worst is over and we're moving more towards a stronger real estate market.