The Figures are in: Find out what happened in Lake Tahoe real estate in February

Lake Tahoe real estate had seen a steady down trend in home sales over the last few years, and the last 9 months has seen a steady upward climb. In February of 2013 buyers seemed to be on a buying frenzy and sellers were deciding not to sell and hold on for a higher sales price in the future. The big topic of conversation among Lake Tahoe Realtor's is the lack of homes for sale and how sellers are pulling their homes off of the market.

Closed Sales of South Lake Tahoe Homes

Closed sales of homes in South Lake Tahoe rose 13.5% over the last 12 months. Closed sales have actually been on the increase locally since May of 2009 and the medium price started to climb in the last 9 months or so. While the market was full of short sales and foreclosures 4 years ago, the market today is full of "non distress" sales. Traditional home sales were up over 84% in February, 2013 when compared to February of 2012. This is huge! Since we do have such a low number of foreclosures and short sales on the market, it would be correct to assume closed sales of those home types were down this past month. There were 52.4% fewer sales of foreclosures and 37.5% fewer short sale closures this past month than the same month a year ago.

Median Sales Price

As you can see on the chart above, the median sales price of homes in Lake Tahoe took a big jump this month. We hit our long time low in February of last year with a median sales price of $197,500. It had been the lowest median price in over 6 years and resembled figures from the 1990's.

Is it too late to find a Lake Tahoe home for sale?

With so much interest from home buyers in the Lake Tahoe area, and drastically reduced inventory of homes for sale there are still some very good opportunities but you will need to move quickly. We're finding that homes are still priced well, and some are even priced "too well" if that is such a thing. There was a recent home for sale in the Upper Truckee neighborhood of Lake Tahoe that was new construction and not completed inside. Buyers felt the price tag was a great deal, resulting in excess of 10 cash offers!

Want to purchase a Lake Tahoe home?
Here are my top 4 helpful tools to find the right home:

1. Sign up for email notifications of the Lake Tahoe MLS new home listings. You will be notified of homes coming on the market the moment they are listed. You will know as soon as the agents know.

2. Another way to find out about the Lake Tahoe real estate market is to sign up to receive my blogs via email.

3. Receive my monthly newsletter.

4. Be prepared with cash or a pre-qualification letter from your mortgage broker or bank to write an offer. I will move quickly for you to avoid being beat out by the heavy competition.

Request more information on real estate in Lake Tahoe by contacting me, Dan Spano, directly.