How is the market?

I get asked daily: how is the real estate market? Here is your monthly market snapshot for south county. There is an extreme shortage of inventory on the market right now.  Active listings are down while closed sales and prices are climbing.  As you can see in the graphs below the south county market and the real estate market as a whole is coming back very strong and with each month prices are steadily increasing.  If you are thinking about selling a home NOW is the time.  Once Spring gets here the market will be flooded with inventory and prices will plateau with simple supply and demand. Right now though inventory is very low so you have little to no competition on the market.  If you have questions or want to know how much your home value has increased call me today at 314-277-2633 or email at Brinkmannrealestate@gmail.com with the subject Home Value.

What direction is the market going?

The market is south St. Louis county is steadily improving.  Buyers are out looking and interest rates are still low.  That combined with the fact that inventory is still relatively low has caused prices to increase and homes to sell faster.  Homes are selling on average about twice as fast as they did 3 years ago and prices are up almost $15,000 on average. The graph below shows the decline in average days on market for homes to sell and the increase is median sales price.  If you are thinking of buying, selling or just want a free no obligation home valuation call me at 314-277-2633 or email me at Brinkmannrealestate@gmail.com.

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Zillow Zestimate said my house was worth....

I know a lot of you love Zillow and also love to go and see what the Zestimate says your home is worth. I get people everyday that say well I already know what my home is worth because Zillow said it is valued at "insert price". The problem with this is not only is real estate a very localized industry where prices can vary from neighborhood to neighborhood but to be honest Zillow is pretty far off a good percentage of the time. The pictures below are directly off of Zillow's website and if you wish you can pull them up yourself at the bottom of Zillow.com under Zestimates.



If you look at the picture here you can see St. Louis does not have percentages listed here and the reason for that is that Zillow pulls straight from the tax assessor they do not use their own calculations in St. Louis. If you look above at the other cities though Zillow tells you that the median error is 10%. That means on a home worth $200,000 they are off by $20,000 on average. So half of the time they are more than $20,000 off of the sale price of your home. If we price your home more than $20,000 off you will not even get a buyer to come look at it. I know you are thinking that's true but that is in other cities St. Louis is not listed in that data.  You are correct but look below and you will see the one star that Zillow gives St. Louis means they are using the tax assessor's records which Zillow, will tell you if you click on it and you can see from the picture, are less accurate than their calculations are.





So if Zillow is more than 10% off on your home's value half of the time and the records they provide for St. Louis are even more inaccurate you can see that a zestimate does not give you a good representation of your homes value. I hope you found this helpful and informational. Have a great week and feel free to email me at: Brinkmannrealestate@gmail.com or call me direct at 314-277-2633