Since the housing downturn has started, short sales always have always commanded a higher price per square foot. Well that has now changed. Median Sales Prices are also quickly coming together as well. The rule of thumb in the past was that short sales were often in better condition than a bank owned and so commanded a premium. Today we see that foreclosures are often being cleaned up and thus the condition isn’t as different. We also have a buyer pool that has heard all the horror stories of trying to buy a short sale and thus will only suffer through the frustration if the price if the value is significantly better.
While we are selling more short sales now than a few years ago, there still remains far too many of them in the market and I still hear regularly from agents that response times are many months – if we could get it down to just a few weeks I am confident we’d see far more of these homes sell. I think lenders continue to unnecessarily devalue short sales by their inability to respond in a timely manner and now I have the numbers to show it.
Median sales price is still higher for short sales but as you can see that is changing quickly. The one reason I don’t like Median Sales Price is that it doesn’t take into account the differences in home size whereas the price per square foot does.
