The real estate market continues to improve as the Flathead Valley nears the middle of 2015, building on the stability and strong foundation from 2014.
That’s the message from Jim Kelley, owner and operator of Kelley Appraisals, who has tracked the valley’s real estate ups and downs for decades. Kelley said the valley is on track to post a banner year of real estate sales, which would be a major boost to buyer and seller confidence coming out of the recession.
“Year to date, residential sales are up about 16 percent over what they were a year ago at this time,” Kelley said. “Basically at that rate, if you project that out through the end of the year, then we could have a higher number of sales than we ever had in the Flathead Valley’s history.”
According to Kelley’s 2014 review, there were 1,507 residential sales in the county in 2014. That represents about a 2 percent decrease in overall sales compared to 2013, which had 1,539 total residential sales, but the median house price in 2014 increased by 3.3 percent over 2013 at $295,780.
The most expensive property sold in 2014 was $6,246,500, and the least expensive was $30,000. Listing prices continued to have a wide range, from $58,000 to $22 million.
Of the overall residential sales in 2014, 29.3 percent were within Kalispell’s city limits, 12.1 percent were in Whitefish’s city limits, and 4.4 percent were in Columbia Falls’ city limits. Another 47.4 percent of the total residential property sales were made within 3.5 mile of Kalispell’s city limits.
Of the 1,507 overall sales in Flathead County in 2014, only 7.9 percent were bank-owned properties and only 1.9 percent were short sales. Kelley said that is a strong indicator that the market is righting itself, and a good sign for the 2015 market.
“The increased sales are market sales, not forced sales as the foreclosures and the short sales were,” he said.
He said he hadn’t crunched the numbers on this year’s non-forced sales, but also that he wouldn’t be surprised if non-forced sales were up by 30 percent this year, given how tight the residential market is.
Vacancies in the current rental market are basically nonexistent, Kelley noted, and the first-time homebuyer market, usually focusing on homes in the $175,000 to $225,000 range, is also slim.
Higher-priced tiers of the market, such as $400,000 and above, still have plenty of stock, Kelley said, but the lower-priced homes are not on the market for long.
“There’s a lot of people who, in all reality, would rather be renting,” Kelley said, though the prices of rentals have increased significantly with the lack of supply.
Land sales have thus far stayed on track with 2014’s numbers, he said, with only about a 3 percent increase. In 2014, there were 1,170 residential land sales, a 6.1 percent increase from the year prior.
The median land price in 2014 was $244,896, up nearly 10 percent from 2013.
As the state’s unemployment numbers keep falling – in March, it was at its lowest since before the recession, coming in at 4.1 percent statewide – and the real estate market continues to stabilize, more buyers and sellers will gain confidence, Kelley said.