We track the market here at Randy Fischer Real Estate daily.  This statistic is rather interesting and is the one I watch the most.  It kind of sums up where the market is at.  In the Residential category of the MLS we had 482 listings at Peak Time, which was September 25, 2005.  We had 657 on 6.30.06  AND 663 on 7.13.07  AND 658 on 8.28.08.  This is all listings in the Residential section of the MLS.  Sales in Douglas County were 398 in 2004, 379 in 2005, 367 in 2006, 342 in 2007 and 313 in 2008 (of the 313 sales, 245 of them were below $200,000).  Sales went down, but the listing volume went up.   As of this morning we had 467 residential listings in the MLS

Lakehomes:  At peak times in the MLS we ran the following numbers  233 Lakehomes listed at 10.6.05 in the MLS, 375 at 7.26.06, 417 at 7.30.07 and 402 at 8.13.08.  Sales in Douglas County were 152 in 2004, 120 in 2005, 107 in 2006, 121 in 2007 and 82 in 2008 (68 of those sales were below $500,000).  Again, sales were almost half and listings almost doubled.  As of this morning we had 214 listings in the lakehome section.

Sales statistics provided by the Greater Alexandria Area Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service.

My comment:  I have to believe that the market is at or near it’s bottom.  Only time will tell.  If someone is interested in buying real estate, these are good times to buy in.  Prices are down, interest rates are phenomenal, inventory has been running at all time highs.  I guess we’ll have to wait a couple of years to see if this was the bottom.  Check in with me then and we can go over the statistics.  But if you wait 2 years to buy and prices should go back up, don’t be mad at me if this was the bottom:)  Quite frankly, I always think that it is a good time to buy real estate if you can afford it.  Real Estate is always just out of reach, I’ve never known it to be easy.  When I bought my office that I am currently in, some of my peers thought that it was not the right time to buy.  We paid $75,000 for it.  Not sure what it is worth today, that was 23 years ago.  US Population stands at 305,843,428 at this moment.  We have a net gain in population of one person every 13 seconds.  That’s almost 2.5 million per year.  Do you have any idea what this will do to real estate over the next 10 years?  I’m going to stick around (Lord willing) and see.