by Greg Fleischaker, licensed agent with Ky Select Properties
I know it’s only September, and most Realtors don’t like to look at yearly totals until December or January, but every once in awhile, I enjoy sneaking a peak at our statistics and seeing where our local real estate market may be headed as our summer turns into fall.
For this look back, I dug into the local Board Of Realtors MLS statistics module, and looked only at single family residences in Jefferson County that had a sales price of one million dollars or more between January 1st, 2006 and August 31st, 2015. And I was a bit surprised with what I found.
Instead of a pretty graph, with always ascending numbers, or even a nice gentle roll up and down over the years, I found a scattered mess of data. Within 10 years worth of information, there are some pretty big ups and downs, from a high of 48 properties sold in 2007 to a low of only 17 homes valued at one million dollars or more
I suppose if I knew some advanced statistical analysis tricks, I could smooth out the two huge outliers, in 2013 and 2007, and maybe then my graph would be a bit more aesthetically pleasing, but I wasn’t paying attention in college during that class, and so I’m not much help in that department.
But I feel certain that there is an overall trend there to see, even with the two outliers present. Million dollars homes were selling pretty well back in 2006, and it shouldn’t surprise us to see that the number of luxury homes being sold starting dropping right after the economic downturn we experienced in 2008. Lending tightened up, and these high end homes can often be some of the most difficult homes to borrow against.
But after a few years of weathering the economic storm, our local market has rebounded quite well, and that includes high end homes like these. This year is shaping up well, having already closed 27 transactions valued at a million dollars or more in just the first eight months of the year, and I can’t imagine that we won’t have at least a few more to add to the list.
My guess is that 2015 will have the third highest total of million dollar sales in Louisville over the past 10 years, with an outside chance at owning the second highest total.
