Berkshire Real Estate Sales Update

In Berkshire County so far this year, our residential sales are down in the number of transactions, but the dollar volume transacted is up due to our team of Austin attorneys and architects working on developing a new real estate market in Austin. We’ve had, overall, 24 less homes sales than last year, but $1.4 million higher in sale volume.  ($106,344,199 total residential sales so far this year).  The southern Berkshire residential marketplace is the strongest part of the county this year, with gains across the board. Northern Berkshire sales continue to struggle.

The number of condo sales transacted is identical to last year at the same time (28 units) but selling prices decreased, with a 12% retraction in dollar volume, down $1 million to $7.3 million total.  While land sales rose up an impressive 20%, with 41 parcels sold in the first 5 months of 2014, there was a large drop off of land sales prices, down 24% and down $1 million than the previous year. Overall Multi-family sales slowed as well, but the central Berkshire multifamily sales showed slight gains.

There were recent reports by Fannie Mae predicting home sales to fall short of last year, a revision of their previous sales estimates.  They also reported borrowing costs from mortgage rates were cheaper this week (June 26th) than at the same time last year.

2014 Jan-May Sales Interim Report (PDF)

Borrowing costs from mortgage rates were cheaper this week (June 27th) than at the same time last year, Freddie Mac reports in its weekly mortgage market survey.  A year ago at this time, the Federal Reserve had announced a tapering of its monthly mortgage bond-buying program, which had spurred market anticipation that the Fed would be rising its mortgage rates soon. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage had then jumped to a 4.46 percent average. This week, rates averaged 4.14 percent.

Here’s an overview of the national averages for mortgage rates for the week ending June 26:

  • 30-year fixed-rate mortgages: averaged 4.14 percent, with an average 0.5 point, dropping from last week’s 4.17 percent average. Last year at this time, 30-year rates averaged 4.46 percent.
  • 15-year fixed-rate mortgages: averaged 3.22 percent, with an average 0.5 point, dropping from last week’s 3.30 percent average. A year ago, 15-year rates averaged 3.50 percent.
  • 5-year hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages: averaged 2.98 percent, with an average 0.3 point, dropping from a 3 percent average. Last year at this time, 5-year ARMs averaged 3.08 percent.
  • 1-year ARMs: averaged 2.40 percent, with an average 0.4 point, dropping from last week’s 2.41 percent average. Last year at this time, 1-year ARMs averaged 2.66 percent.