To respond to some readers’ comments, I thought I would publish a few more statistics from the Lake Martin MLS* waterfront home sales for August 2008.

Before I get into it, let me first caution all readers not to draw broad conclusions about the Lake Martin real estate market from the following two graphs.  I still maintain that looking too deeply into monthly sales statistics may be misleading, since we have such a very small market in terms of number of sales.  It just doesn’t make for a very good sampling pool when there are only 20 sales. So again I stress, this is for illustrative purposes only.  Keep in mind that you are only looking at 20 sales, only in the month of August.

The chart below makes a great case study as to why I am loathe to use trend analysis on monthly sales statistics. I am trying to answer the question, what did waterfront homes sell for relative to list price in August on Lake Martin? As you can see, sale number 18 does not have a sold price listed (no blue bar).  So if I were to include that in the average, it would totally mess up the average calculation.  I am sure that the home wasn’t give away for free.  For some reason, the seller chose not to list the sales price in the MLS.  It was a home that listed for around $300,000 – so I imagine it sold for around that amount.  But I don’t want to guess, so I left it out of the average calculation.  It’s a rolling average, so e.g. only the first 10 sales are averaged in #10, then on #11, 11 are averaged, etc.  On the last one, #20, I only average 19 since #18 was zero.

Nevertheless, here we go.  The blue bar is each sale’s % of Original List Price divided into sales price.  Original List Price is the list price used when a home was first entered on the Lake Martin MLS.  So if a home was put on the MLS on January 1 for $450,000 – then the list price was reduced on March 1 to $400,000 – then sold on August 15 for $385,000 – the calculation is $385,000 / $450,000.

Here is another chart, attempting to describe the average Days On Market for each waterfront home sold through the Lake Martin MLS in August.  My old statistics professor (RIP) would have a fit looking at this.  The standard deviation is too huge to be useful.  It goes from zero on the low side to a high of 456.  The rolling average ends up at 159.

Days on Market is defined as Date Sold minus Begin Date.  So if a property was sold on August 15, and it was entered on the MLS on July 1, that would equal 46 Days On Market.  Our average, at the end of August, was 159 Days On Market.  Is that close to our average for 2008?  My gut tells me yes, but I have not confirmed that.  So don’t take it as gospel.

I may decide to incorporate these types of charts in the future, but as you can see they get tedious when you have to comb through them to weed out sales which do not publish a sales price or some such other datum.

Hey Buyers – I’m talking to you. Yeah you.  If you have even thought about buying Lake Martin real estate in the last 4 years or 4 minutes, I am talking to you.  Would you like to know the top 5 properties out there in your category (lot, home, condo) that are the best value? Why not email me at the address at the top of this page.  Warren Buffet is buying, so you can say you did it because of him.  You will look smart.

“John – Where is your friend Ward?” From Lake Martin Voice

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More posts on Lake Martin MLS Statistics

(*)Disclaimers: All of the above info was taken from the Lake Martin Area Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service. Accuracy is not guaranteed but deemed reliable. The above does not include sales by FSBOs or developers that sell privately and not through the MLS. But, I do think that the above represents a very large majority of all sales on Lake Martin.