A question you hear a lot as a realtor is "What's the market doing?". It seems like there should be an easy answer to this but there really isn't. Rarely do the average and median sales prices appreciate at the same rate and rarely do the average and median price per square foot change the same amount either. Also, with such a small sample size of sales in cozy, little Big Bear, it's hard to decide what time periods to compare.
In order to have a more accurate idea of what Big Bear home values are doing, I have always found it best to look at as many numbers as possible over a variety of time frames. The last post was a quarterly comparison. So this post, let's take a look at what the Big Bear real estate market is doing on a year-to-date basis.
Looking at sales from January 1st through October 1st of this year and comparing it to sales from the same time period last year, we see sales down about 2% with 842 Big Bear homes selling this year during the aforementioned time frame.
The average and median sales price of Big Bear homes have both appreciated 7% and 14% to $302,126 ans $252,000 respectively. The average and median price per square foot also rose 7% and 9% respectively to $204 and $201.
The average sale price to list price ratio stayed constant at 97% with sellers conceding 3% off their list price on average during negotiations. The days on market that a Big Bear home was listed before selling dropped slightly from 108 days to 97 days.
As mentioned in the previous post, home inventory has stayed about the same with there currently being about 540 Big Bear homes for sale.
Reviewing these numbers, I would say our market remains strong with sales staying steady, a low inventory of homes, days on market decreasing, and values appreciating slightly ahead of the historical average in the high single digits.
With mortgage rates still low and Mammoth Mountain continuing to make improvements to our local ski resorts, I would expect the market to remain strong through the foreseeable future.