Here is your May 2014 Temecula Real Estate Market Update Complete with Graphs and Analysis

While it is common to see fluctuations in the average sale price from month to month, and I have been expecting the pace of appreciation year over year to flatten, the average sales price drop experienced in April took me by suprise. Month over month the average sales price fell 7% from $410,000 to $383,000. This average sales price for Temecula is only 2% higher than we were in April 2013. New listings were up, as you will see in the next graph, and it appears as though many sellers got a liitle ahead of themselves and were priced high to begin with, which forced those needing to sell to lower their list price. The lowest priced sale in Temecula in April was $58,000 (mobile home) and the highest was $1,250,000.

While many communities in Temecula saw sales activity increase in April, compared to the year before, Temecula itself did not. Although total sales were up 6% month over month activity was 9% lower than a year ago. Listings, on the other hand, were up for the third straight month and were 8% higher month over month and 24% higher year over year. With new listings outpacing sales activity buyers had more choice than they did a year ago and didn’t have to rush to make offers. This is the main reason we saw the larger than expected decrease in average sales price. As sales activity in many other areas was up, I expect to see the year over year price trend for Temecula move back up in the months ahead.

Days to sell has been relatively stable for the past 5 months. For April we came in at an average of 60 days, which is less than 10 days more than we were last year. This isn’t bad at all considering the number of homes for sale is quite a bit higher than a year ago. 

The amount of inventory available trended up slightly to a 3.5 month supply, one month more than we were seeing a year ago, but still a fairly constrained market overall considering a 6 month supply is generally considered the benchmark. As one might expect, available inventory is lowest amongst the lowest priced homes and increases as the price point goes up.

The health of the overall real estate market in Temecula continues to improve. This is best demonstrated by the number of distressed properties we are seeing in the marketplace. In April, distressed properties (short sales and foreclosures) represented 9% of all closings compared to 32% of all closings in April 2013.