Lake Tahoe Real Estate Market Review for April

Median price of homes sold continues to increase

The median sales prices for homes sold in April of 2013 rose 48% from April of 2012 to $334,500. When analyzing the figures in more detail, you see some interesting things.

I have set up four price ranges for South Lake Tahoe Real Estate Sales: 1) homes priced under $299,887, 2) homes priced @299,888 to $434,999, 3) $435,000 to $649,999 and 4) $650,000 and above. The median sales price of homes in the lowest range rose 34.5% from a year ago and the highest range also rose a bit, by 5.7%. The other 2 ranges actually had a very slight drop in the median. Is this any cause to worry about the market? No. Since there is such a small range in prices in each range there really isn't much room for them to change.

Closed sales rise

There were 58 closed sales in April of this year, up 18.4% over April of last year. Over the last 12 months there were 775 closed sales in South Lake Tahoe which was also up from the previous 12 month period by 15.7%. When breaking down this category by the price ranges mentioned above, again we see some interesting aspects. During the month all prices ranges except for the lowest had increased sales. The lowest priced group actually saw a drop of 31.3%. This has been actually expected as I've been talking about for months. We don't have much inventory of homes priced under $300,000 so sooner or later sales in that range will drop off. The second range of homes saw a 80% increase, the third range up 400% and the upper range up 60% over April in 2012.

Inventory of homes for sale in Lake Tahoe

Across the United States there is a drastically reduced number of homes for sale. I've discussed many reasons why and I don't see this scenario changing any time soon. In April there were 232 homes for sale in South Lake Tahoe, CA. which is a 41.7% drop from April of 2012. If you look at the last 12 months, the number of homes for sale is 38.8% lower than the previous 12 months. When looking at the price ranges all 4 of them had large decreases in inventory. The biggest drop was the second range which saw 50% fewer homes for sale than April of 2012 and the lowest range was not far behind with a 49.4% drop. We haven't seen any evidence that this trend will change any time soon. New listings of homes for sale continued their downward trend over the past 12 months with 900 new listings. In 2007 we had almost 1,500 so you can see the big drop. In April we actually had a one month increase so we'll watch for May to see if this trend is changing.

Lake Tahoe Real Estate

As I wrote recently, 4 of the 5 hottest real estate markets in which to sell a home are within a 2 hour drive from Lake Tahoe. They are all seeing homes on the market for only a couple of weeks. That isn't the case in our mountain town with an average of 148 days on the market over the last 12 months. In fact, April's 164 days was an increase of 16.7 % from April of 2012. Over the last 6 years we've had a low of 137 days and a high of 175 days on the market. This variable isn't a big predictor of the Lake Tahoe real estate market unless it starts to drop drastically. I can't imagine what things will look like if we had an average of 14 days on the market with our reducing inventory and increasing sales.

Keep on top of things

Here are my 3 helpful hints on how to stay informed and stay on top of the Lake Tahoe real estate market:

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 here.

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