So what has happened to the foreclosure properties? This chart shows a six-year history of foreclosure and distressed home sales in Flathead County. The high point of the distressed home sales occurred in 2011 when 33.6 percent of the sales were bank-owned (REO) properties and another 8.4 percent were short sales. In 2011, the median sales price of bank-owned properties dropped to $145,050 and the short sales median price was $164,000. The 58 percent of sales that were non-distressed had a median price of $210,650, but the bank-owned and short sales brought the overall median for 2011 down to $180,000.
Since 2011, the market has seen steady improvement and in the first nine months of 2015, only 7.5 percent of the sales have been bank-owned homes, with 1 percent of these short sales. The other 91.5% have been non-distressed sales. The 7.5 percent that were bank-owned homes have had a median price of $161,000 and the non-distressed sale have had a median of $245,000 with the overall median being $235,250. The bank-owned and short sales are still having an impact of the market, but not nearly to the point that they did in 2011.
The high point of bank-owned homes listed for sale was in February of 2012 when there were 168 on the market. By October 2015, this number dropped to 26, which represents a substantial improvement over what we have seen over the last few years.
In 1981, Jim started Kelley Appraisal in Kalispell and has since built an extensive data base of economic and real estate-related data on northwestern Montana. Over the last several years, he has published annual reports on the Flathead Real Estate Market and been a guest speaker on numerous occasions for various groups in the Flathead.