South Tahoe Real Estate in October

The South Lake Tahoe real estate market typically begins to slow down in the late fall and into the winter. There has been a trend of slowing sales, but buyer activity is still quite active for this time of year. There were 45 houses sold in October on the South Lake Tahoe MLS. Although the number of sales is down from 61 in August, it is not far off from the 53 houses that sold in July.

Distress sales accounted for 15 of the 45 houses that were sold. 5 of the distress sales were short sales and 10 were bank owned foreclosures. The bank owned foreclosures that sold in October sold for a very low price per square foot of $154. With the exception of two newer foreclosures, the bank owned properties that sold in October were in poor condition and needed work..

South Lake Tahoe MLS Statistics for October 2010

• There were 45 houses that sold in October on the South Lake Tahoe MLS, this is down from the 61 houses that were sold in September.
• 10 of the houses that were sold were bank owned foreclosures and 5 were short sales.
• The median sales price of the sold homes was $297,000, down from $330,500 in September.
• The average sales price of the sold homes was $357,263, down from $445,254 in September.
• The average days on the market was 143 and the median days on the market was 115.
• The average price per square foot of the houses that were sold was $201, down from $219 in September.
• The percentage of distress sales that were sold was 33%, up slightly from 28% in September.

The current inventory of houses available on the South Lake Tahoe MLS in the city and county is 443. 356 of the houses are active, and 87 are active pending. Of the current inventory, 41 are bank owned foreclosures. 23 of the foreclosures are active and 18 are in escrow. There are 84 short sales currently on the market. 41 of the short sales are active and 43 of them are in escrow.

In looking at the current inventory of pending houses, 62 of the 87 houses are distress sales. That puts the percentage of distress sales to regular sales that are in escrow at over 71%. Hopefully we can get some of these short sales closed and that percentage will go down.