Frederick County Short Sale Blog | Homes for Sale in Frederick Md

How to Filter The Onslaught of Media Information Regarding Real Estate

In the information age, the consumer is more aware and educated than ever before.  But sometimes the sheer amount of information can render the most thoughtful person helpless.  How to filter all of this information is crucial to a Frederick Home Seller or Buyer when they are about to make one of the largest financial decisions they will ever make.

The First Fact to remember:  There is no such thing as a National Real Estate Market.  These statistics that get spewed regularly are not meaningful to you, the local buyer or seller.  What the market is doing in California is not relevant to Frederick Maryland.  All Real Estate is Local. 

The Second Fact to remember:  Different statistics tell you different things.  For example, the latest report from the Case-Shiller Index, which is a home price gauge, reports that home prices declined a record 18.6% between the first quarter 2009 and the first quarter 2008.  This is important general information for those home sellers who may still be in denial.

The Case-Shiller index is limited, however, and has flaws.  First, it only reports the home price data from 20 cities accross the US, and they're not all the most populated cities.  The second flaw is that the statistics are 2 months old.  And of course, the last flaw is that real estate cannot be generalized by city.  There are numerous local markets within a city that have different market forces.

There are other statistics that are more important for local buyers and sellers.  We know that prices have fallen year over year, but what are they doing montly?  A Frederick buyer, looking for a home, shouldn't care what the prices were compared to last year, what can they expect in the next 30 days? 

The Frederick County real estate market statistics are showing that the price declines are slowing down month to month since February 2009.  The inventory is shrinking, the pending sales are up.  These kinds of statistics tell a different story.  They point to a bottoming out of the Frederick County market. 

Contact us to see homes for sale in the Frederick Real Estate market, or use our free MLS property search:

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The Highland Group