Do you ever wonder how our real estate market is here in Des Moines? Unfortunately, we spend a lot of time listening to how rough things are in other cities around the country, but too often we don’t really consider what our real estate climate is like.

This hits home for me more this week than it has for quite some time. I am currently at a mortgage industry event in Las Vegas. I spend a lot of time connecting and networking with other professionals from across the country. I’ve been here since Monday (not long). I’m already hearing crazy make me loose sleep type stories. Builders are going to great lengths to sell homes. It just reinforces the fact that real estate is local. Fortunately, Des Moines hasn’t seen the big run-up in values (in the past few years), so we won’t see a huge decline in property values either. Seriously, it’s scary in Vegas… full condo projects (HUGE FREAKIN’ TOWERS) are going back to the bank in foreclosure and folks who had their $20,000 deposit are loosing it. Freaking out yet?.. I was. It get’s worse – because of the recent changes in the mortgage market, they can’t get the loan they were pre-approved for when they put the place under contract. I thought this meant they’d be able to get their deposit back (I’m not crazy, right??). Well, apparently the attorney’s for the builders/deveopers had structured the deals as cash sale’s. Financing hiccups, no longer a way to get out. Yikes.

Crazy bad situation huh?

Back to the topic at hand – I’m a fan of having as much information available before I take action on any big decisions. I don’t know about you, but I think buying or selling a home is a pretty big deal.

As a blogger and mortgage guy, when I receive good information – I pass it on. Home listings and sales are an interesting set of information most of us don’t have super easy access to. Thankfully, I have a realtor that hammers me with e-mails (Just kidding, I don’t mind them) on market updates and her opinion on where things are at.

Whether you’re looking to purchase, sell or refinance a home – this stuff matters. These statistics are compiled from the Multiple Listing Service and cover the Des Moines, Iowa residential real estate market.

With her permission, I post the facts here so you can come up with your very own market opinion. Here’s this week’s market commentary:

“Our pending sales and closed sales were both up from the prior week and days on market for sale pending has been decreasing over the past 2 weeks. We rounded out May with 651 home sales which is down from May of 2007 when we had a total of 1046 sales. The good news is that average sale price has increased about $4000 in the past year to $168,400.” – Heather Barglof, Peoples Company

If you’re a super cool person and have any market statistics you think our readers would find valuable, please feel free to contact me. If it’s relevant, It’ll show up here!

If you’re looking for my professional opinion or looking for a comment (press related), please contact me here.

Tagged as: Closings, Days on Market, Des Moines, Iowa, Listings, Market, Pendings, Price Reductions, Sales