Thursday, January 17, 2008

Hmmm...City On Fire


When people used to use words like "on fire" or "exploding" to describe Lancaster City it wasn't a good thing. They were talking about problems the city was struggling with. This isn't the case anymore. Today when people use terms like that, they are talking about the massive amount of development (mostly commercial) that has taken place at break-neck speed. You'd think that all this would have a spill-over effect on the residential market. Well, the data says it has. Property values have increased and houses are spending less time on the market. What does this mean for potential buyers? I'll address that in my next post. But first, the numbers:

In 2000, the average house in the city sold for $59,968 and spent 96 days on the market. A chain of unbroken property value increases has continued from then until now with a 5.6% increase in 2001, 13.5% in 2002, 3.7% in 2003, 16.9% in 2004, 5.1% in 2005, 4.5% in 2006, and finally 5.3% in 2007. That's an annual average increase of about 7.8%. During the same period, the amount of time houses were spending on the market dropped from 96 days to about 45.

Lancaster City is probably the last bastion of affordability in Lancaster County and the window of opportunity to buy while it is affordable looks like it's closing.

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