Real Estate Market Report (3rd Quarter) - North Brunswick, South Brunswick, East Brunswick

With the economic events of the last few weeks, I've been keeping a close eye on our local market. Before the bailouts, many people were predicting that we were close to the bottom, and though prices may continue to drop, the number of homes sold would go up. Now, with this economic uncertainty, its hard to say. Let's take a look at the market data...

As we've been seeing in national trends, based on data from the Middlesex MLS, the average price of a single family home in the Brunswicks have gone down, though the reality is that we haven't seen such a sharp decline until this past quarter.

While its early on in this quarter, based on current trends, we'll probably see the average price drop into the 450-455K range, though in these times, anything is possible.

Something I've been watching closely is the number of closed sales. While the numbers are down, they aren't that far off. If we see this number go up year over year in the 4th quarter into 2009, we could be looking at the bottom of the market. However, if we continue to have economic turmoil or rates rise significantly, we may continue to see a drop in number of home sales.

Once we see a stop to a drop in number of sales, that'll be great news, because prices will follow. Perhaps not immediately, but they will follow.