Housing Statistics

[Tim Liston]

Rather than append the old “Housing Statisticsâ€Â￾ thread I decided to create a new one. The 2nd quarter 2007 Lakewood home sale numbers are in from the MLS. Actually they've been available for about a month, I just haven't taken the time to post yet. But there is chatter about valuations, assessments and the like on another thread so I thought I'd get off my duff....

Below are the updated Lakewood numbers. As before, the first dollar column below is the actual average for that quarter. The second column is “smoothedâ€Â￾ by calculating the weighted (by # of homes sold) average sales price for the most recent 15 months ended that quarter. This time I added the actual number of homes sold in each quarter as the final column. Don't forget that the sale of even one $1,000,000 lakefront home adds around $10,000 to the average price for a quarter so even the smoothed numbers can bounce around a bit.

Q2 2007 $152,400 $152,108 141
Q1 2007 $153,200 $147,370 103
Q4 2006 $148,900 $145,480 120
Q3 2006 $149,400 $149,760 153
Q2 2006 $156,300 $148,590 154
Q1 2006 $119,300 $144,861 88
Q4 2005 $142,700 $149,374 134
Q3 2005 $161,500 $149,668 150
Q2 2005 $155,400 $146,203 162
Q1 2005 $139,900 $142,415 99
Q4 2004 $135,400 $143,681 124
Q3 2004 $153,800 $143,365 174
Q2 2004 $145,000 $139,200 147
Q1 2004 $138,400 $137,847 86
Q4 2003 $135,000 $137,711 121
Q3 2003 $146,800 $137,085 185
Q2 2003 $136,000 $135,357 170
Q1 2003 $127,100 $135,453 94
Q4 2002 $137,600 $136,573 141
Q3 2002 $137,400
Q2 2002 $132,100
Q1 2002 $139,900
Q4 2001 $136,900

From this data anyway, it appears that the bursting of the housing bubble has not affected Lakewood home values much, if at all. But I think you have to consider the possibility that homes in some price ranges may be selling better than homes in other price ranges. Nationally, the inventory of unsold homes has reached record levels, and I suspect the same holds true for Lakewood. When the owners of these homes finally capitulate, I'm guessing we'll see these reasonably strong numbers start to falter.

You also should note that the moving average is substantially higher this quarter than last because the anomalous $119,300 average in Q1 2006 has fallen out of the moving average for the first time. So increases from here will be even more difficult in the quarters to come.

Here is the url for the current report: https://www2.normls.com:442/market/pdf/ ... LS2Q07.pdf . You can tweak this url by changing the quarter and the year to see earlier reports. I had to print all the reports to gather the data summarized above, and I created a spreadsheet to do the math. I did that last March so it's very little effort going forward and I will continue to update these numbers on a quarterly basis. One wager I will make right here right now, when the reassessments next come out in a couple years, what we are told is the average increase (?) in home values in Lakewood will bear no resemblance to these numbers. They sure didn't last year.

Finally, I'd like to lay this one on you this time around. Let's say your home is worth $150,000. Your property tax bill is what, around $3900 a year I think. Now let's say when your home is reassessed it is said to be worth $160,000. The $10,000 additional valuation generates an additional tax of about $260.

Now for some math (you know I like math). The present value of a “perpetuityâ€Â￾ (an amount paid forever) is said to be that amount times the reciprocal of the “discount rateâ€Â￾ (in this case the interest rate without any adjustment because you can pretty much count on having to pay that $260 forever).

Let's say the interest rate is 5%. The value of $260 paid forever is $260 times 1/.05 is $260 times 20 is $5200. What that means, in a very real sense, is that the city (primarily) and county own about half of any increase in the value of your home, by way of the additional taxes that it receives thereby. Frankly, because the city can tax you the way it does based on the value of your home, it owns about half your home, and you own the other half (even though you paid for all of it and the city paid nothing at all).

As Jim would say, FWIW....

[Stephen Eisel]

Zillow.com (clicky here) There are some River addresses that show up under 44107