Although the number of Big Bear home sales is still down in 2014, prices are still showing strength heading into the second half of the year.
In comparing July 2014 to July of last year, sales are down 16%. This trend is still a likely hangover from the poor weather we had this winter which resulted in a significant drop in visitors to the Big Bear Valley.
Although we saw this slip in home sales, when comparing price measures from this July to last July, we see remarkable gains. The average and median sales prices are up 22% and 44% and the average and median price per square foot are up 15% and 26% respectively. These gains seem too good to be true. But although these numbers are accurate, remember that in our small market, we have a relatively small number of sales each month which can cause anomalies or spikes in data at times.
So to keep the aforementioned numbers in perspective, lets look at a larger set of data by comparing Big Bear real estate sales on a year-to-date basis.
Comparing sales from January through July of 2014 to that of the same time period in the previous year, we still see sales down 22%. But not unlike our monthly July comparison above, below you will see that Big Bear homes prices are still seeing impressive annual appreciation on a year-to-date basis.
In that year-to-date comparison, the average and median sales prices of Big Bear homes are up 12% and 14% and the average and median price per square foot are up 18% and 19% as well.
Looking at both the July-to-July comparison and the year-to-date comparison, we see that Big Bear real estate is continuing its strong run back towards peak prices. Although we would still need a few more years of this kind of appreciation to get back to 2006 values, it is comforting that the market is showing consistent and reasonable gains. (See figure below.)
With the number of Big Bear homes for sale still on the low side and with mortgage interest rates still below the 4.5% mark, I would expect to see continued improvement in the foreseeable future.