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7/30/2010

DAVID CLOUSTON

Driving through many Salina neighborhoods in all areas of the city, it’s not uncommon these days to see multiple homes for sale, some bearing signs saying “price reduced.”

The latest numbers show that the market has, in fact, slowed some — single-family homes are taking longer to sell and the number of homes sold in June was down compared to June 2009.

However, the average sale price rose — $134,869 this June as compared to $129,354 in June 2009.

“Our market is a little different than it’s been. But we could be in a lot worse shape than we are,” said Chris Ross, president of the Salina Board of Realtors and a Realtor for Coldwell Banker Antrim-Piper Wenger Realtors, 631 E. Crawford.

Summer, when school is out, is traditionally the time when there are more homes on the market and more families looking to relocate before classes start again in the fall, Ross said.

“We traditionally do have more inventory, we just need the sales to follow that. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t,” he said.

Ross deduces Salina’s home real estate market by interpreting the statistical clues based on his experience. Sometimes the numbers can be misleading by themselves, he said.

The average sales price, for instance, can be deceiving since it can merely reflect what kind of homes are selling the most at the time.

“If you’ve got a lot of higher end homes or new construction homes (on the market) it can raise your average sales price,” Ross said. “Or if you have a month or a year that you sell a lot of foreclosed or distressed properties, it can lower your average sales price.”

Salina area home sales fell by about 16 percent for June compared to the same month last year, the board of realtors reports. A total of 85 units sold this past June as compared to 101 for June 2009.


Read the rest of this story in Saturday’s Journal.