Houses like this great ranch home in Douglass Hills are quite affordable when compared with the nation as a whole. The Forbes.com Web site confuses me. I know they're trying to have more pages, so each page can have more ads, thus more ad revenue, but as far as navigating it, I always find it frustrating. But what's not frustrating is that Forbes' analysts are high on Louisville real estate. So much so that again this year they rank our fair city quite high—4th in the country, in fact. Just last November, Francesca Levy had Louisville at #17 in her Best Bang-For-The-Buck Cities, w

See how home improvement dollars are being spent on different parts of the home. (Click to enlarge.) The fine folks at Fixr have updated their Home Improvement graphic with new numbers. I believe it's interesting to see how the highs of 2007 have been dropping even as home sales have dropped at the same time. This says that most consumers aren't very optimistic about the direction of our economy. If you're a Louisville home owner, feel free to click on our Home Improvement category for all the posts related to improving your Louisville home.

2010 trending over past two years but short of 2006-07 levels. We began this feature on Louisville Homes Blog back in April and will be updating this chart periodically. Putting this data into chart form makes it easier to discern trends against past performance. Enjoy! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Just thought I'd share what a friend sent to me today. Not sure if this holds to public perception or not but even with "the worst housing market in decades" the numbers tell a different story.

Usually, I'm all about charts, maps, graphs... you get the picture. When I read the excerpt from a Web site I visit regularly, I was excited to try it out for my hometown of Louisville, KY. Trouble is, this might be one of those few times where the picture doesn't communicate the information very well. Maybe another kind of chart would work better? All I can tell is that it appears that more people are moving out of Louisville than are moving in. This agrees with census data that says we've lost 13,000 people since 1990.

I saw recently that the National Association of Realtors published their annual Smartphone Survey Report. A great deal of this report is already well-known (and boring) but a couple of the results caught my eye. Keep in mind this survey is targeting real estate agents not the public at large. When I became a Realtor in Louisville, I had a standard cell phone but I knew I needed a more powerful communication tool. So I performed some research and eventually purchased a BlackBerry. This new device was certainly better than my Samsung but it wasn't incredible. Email was much better, te

Keep in mind that these numbers are affected by distressed transactions which are a good portion of our sales and currently increasing. Stats and projections provided by CoreLogic. In Louisville-Jefferson County, home prices, including distressed sales, declined by -0.73 percent in March 2010 compared to March 2009. This compares to February's year-over-year HPI, which was 0.87 percent.** Excluding distressed transactions, year-over-year HPI for March is 1.87 percent [editor: that's an increase], compared to February which was 0.37 percent. CoreLogic is projecting the 12-month forecast

Putting data into chart form almost always communicates better than simply reading the data. For example, looking at the chart above that shows the total number of homes sold by year in Louisville, KY. It's clear that 2008 and 2009 have been tremendously down years, when compared to the previous five. But look back to the levels of the late 90's and early 00's and they are right in line. Interesting. Ivan Turgenev would have been proud. He originally authored, "A picture shows me at a glance what it takes dozens of pages of a book to expound."

First American CoreLogic produces some great reports. Not great in the sense that everything is positive but that they are very thorough and timely. This most recent report has this to say about real estate in Louisville, Kentucky. In Louisville-Jefferson County, home prices, including distressed sales, increased by 0.87 percent in February 2010 compared to February 2009. This compares to January's year-over-year HPI, which was -0.10 percent.** Excluding distressed transactions, year-over-year HPI for February is 0.37 percent, compared to January which was 0.92 percent. First American Co

Here are a couple pieces of news that relate to Louisville real estate. The first comes from an AP story that WAVE picked up, Pending home sales rise 8.2 percent in February. The National Association of Realtors said Monday its seasonally adjusted index of sales agreements rose 8.2 percent from January to a February reading of 97.6. January's reading was revised slightly downward to 90.2. A lot of this is due to the tax incentives that are due to expire on April 30, 2010, but still it's positive news. What will be more telling is the numbers for May and how they compare to the last two y

We experienced a much better month in March than February. Every area in Louisville had increases in the number of homes sold (Area 0 stayed even with 10), some realizing a gain of almost 100%—Area 8-Hurstbourne/Middletown/Anchorage went from 44 sales in February to 90 this past month. Sale averages, however, did continue to decline in most areas. As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. March 2010 AREA SALES AVERAGE DoM 0 Central Downtown District 10 $97,905 88 1 Downtwn/Old&WestLouisville/Shively 73

With basketball season almost complete, thoughts of another kind of rebound is quickly approaching. Spring always holds an upswing in Louisville real estate but the real question is, "How will this Spring compare to the last two Springs?" This AP story cites a "partial rebound in consumer confidence" as a reason for optimism. The Conference Board said Tuesday its Consumer Confidence Index rose to 52.5 in March, recovering about half of the nearly 11 points it lost in February. Analysts expected a reading of 50 for March, but the index is still far below the 90 reading that's considered

Price cuts seem to be slowing down in some markets, which indicates the real estate market could well be stabilizing, with Heather Fernandez, Trulia.com and CNBC's Diana Olick. Here's an interesting CNBC spot on the stats that show homeowners aren't cutting prices like they have been. Looks to be another sign that we're nearing the end of this housing recession. As always, keep in mind that the Louisville real estate market doesn't experience the wild highs or lows that plaque other parts of the country (see this post).

We're getting mixed results in February compared to January. Most areas saw total sales drop but home values increase. For the entire market, average home prices moved up approximately $2700 (not seasonally adjusted). As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. February 2010 AREA SALES AVERAGE DoM 0 Central Downtown District 10 $134,550 102 1 Downtwn/Old&WestLouisville/Shively 59 $42,211 35 2 Butchertown/Highlands/Germantwn 53 $202,696 88 3 Brownsboro/StMatthews 38 $257,989 1

Housing news still dominates a large portion of our nation's economic mindset. On Wednesday, Reuters writes New home sales hit record low, prices tumble. The Commerce Department said on Wednesday sales of newly built single-family homes dropped 11.2 percent to an annual rate of 309,000 units, the lowest level since records started in 1963, from 348,000 units in December. Let's be clear, this statistic is talking about new construction, not sales of existing homes. News isn't that bleak here in Louisville. Not according to the Courier-Journal who published Louisville Realtors continue sal

After a couple of down years, it looks like home values in Louisville are heading back up. This information comes from First American CoreLogic. Home Prices in Louisville-Jefferson County Increase In Louisville-Jefferson County, home prices, including distressed sales, increased by 0.63 percent in December 2009 compared to December 2008. This compares to November's year-over-year HPI, which was 0.06 percent.** Excluding distressed transactions, year-over-year HPI for December is 0.11 percent, compared to November which was -0.87 percent. What's even better is that they're forecast

January was down from December in large part due to the weather, but also from uncertainty about the economy. There are signs that things will be picking up as we head into the Spring. As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. January 2010 AREA SALES AVERAGE DoM 0 Central Downtown District 11 $165,907 90 1 Downtwn/Old&WestLouisville/Shively 56 $46,375 64 2 Butchertown/Highlands/Germantwn 54 $159,210 52 3 Brownsboro/StMatthews 35 $201,374 104 4 Pleasure Rdg/Valley Stat

At the turn of every year, we like to look back and reflect on the year past. Here at Louisville Homes Blog, we're no different. But it's also important to look forward and see how to best take advantage on the real estate market for your own situation. Predicting the future is always a tricky task but there are some very bright minds at the National Association of Realtors (NAR) who make it their job to study the data. Now, this data isn't specific to Louisville, KY but we can still learn a few things from it. Here are some of the high points from a recently published NAR article. N

I've got another post on deck, but before we look forward I wanted to highlight some data I just found about Louisville's 3rd Quarter of 2009 in real estate. The first table shows total units for Greater Louisville, Region 3 of Kentucky. # SOLD 3Q 2009 # SOLD 3Q 2008 # SOLD % 3,519 2,993 17.57% As you can see, that's a pretty big jump; higher than many projected. Which brings us to the second table. Why was the increase that large? Probably because prices dropped so much. Median Price 3Q 2009 Median Price 3Q 2008 Median Price % $136,800 $

Numbers are down for December, as expected, especially after a stronger than normal November. But maybe not as down as one might have guessed. As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. December 2009 AREA SALES AVERAGE DoM 0 Central Downtown District 6 $135,721 25 1 Downtwn/Old&WestLouisville/Shively 74 $46,566 77 2 Butchertown/Highlands/Germantwn 68 $178,766 76 3 Brownsboro/StMatthews 37 $244,747 82 4 Pleasure Rdg/Valley Station 52 $102,138 67 5 Auburnda