Meridian Real Estate Market
Meridian’s real estate market in July was quite similar to Ada County’s (see previous post). We finished the month with 132 single family home sales. This is down 27% from last year at the same time. The Treasure Valley as a whole is off by a much larger percentage, dur to a weaker market in Canyon County. New homes are still selling in Meridian, with 51 proud new owners last month. That means that 81 existing homes were sold. I’ve had a couple folks inquire about the mix of new to resale numbers, so for this post I gathered those numbers as well.
Pendings show a similar mix, with 218 total sales waiting to close. 86 of those are new, and 129 are resales. And the inventory is holding up there at 1337 total active listings in Meridian. 450 of those are new construction, and 887 are resales.
Like the county as a whole, the key is price, price, and price. Condition helps immensely, but price trumps it all. As you might imagine, the number of active and motivated buyers out there right now is not what we’re used to seeing, but there seem to be a number of bargain hunters too. Add to that mix a number of bank owned and short sale properties, and you have a market with very little pricing power. The bright side of that is that affordability is more back in line with Treasure Valley incomes and lifestyles. Affordability was the biggest complaint I heard two years ago, as prices rose beyond what average Meridian area residents were able to pay and affordable neighborhoods seemed to disappear. Now is a good time to be looking around, because there are some nice deals appearing in our market.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that the annual shape of our market is more nearly normal this year. That is a good sign, and I’ll post a multi-year graph to show you what I mean. That’s the first sign of a healtier market.
