This tends to be a blog for analytical folks, so let’s further dissect the market stats to assist in making better comparisons and decisions about home buying and selling.
We’ve discussed how the supply and demand for one-story homes is quite different from the staired variety. Older folks are hanging onto their single-levels so the supply is lower, and with 76 million baby-boomers heading into retirement with bad knees and arthritis, the demand is growing.
Our MLS imposes a cap on the number of listings for research at 650. So I broke down the numbers below into price categories to help demonstrate the differences in pricing between one-story homes, and not-one-story (two-story, three-story, four-story, split-level, and other):
Pricing of NSDCC Annual Sales Between $1,000,000 – $1,400,000
| Year | ||
| 2013 | ||
| 2014 | ||
| 2015 | ||
| 2016 |
Pricing of NSDCC Annual Sales Between $1,400,000 – $1,800,000
| Year | ||
| 2013 | ||
| 2014 | ||
| 2015 | ||
| 2016 |
It’s probably not a big surprise to anyone reading this that one-story homes are more popular. But let’s note two important points:
- One-story homes are carrying the load, statistically – their pricing is appreciating at a steady clip, while the pricing of two-story homes has been flat as a pancake.
- Only use one-story comps to valuate the single-level homes, and likewise, only use two-story comps to put a price on a two-story home. The pricing of one-story homes is so much higher that, if included in a two-story analysis, they will skew the pricing artificially higher.
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Good discussion, and not disputing the premise at all. But the raw numbers give a pretty heavy skew. The fact that one-story homes are much smaller on average, the $sqft will naturally come out higher since the lot value for each side-by-side home is a relative constant. If one had to try to price a 1-story based on 2 story comps, or vice-versa, I’d guess a 20% bump for the single level, everything else being relatively equal.
Wow! Excellent points! Especially #2!