This certainly was the year of extremes. It makes me think of the patient who has one foot in ice water and the other in scalding water and his temperature is normal. It sure doesn't feel normal.

To give you more of a market over view I took a look at MLS sales in Chittenden County and then a few individual towns. Over the last year there has been incredible swing in our market and I think the origins of those swings were in the financial meltdown at the end of 08 and the efforts to undo that.

Our single-family home sales volume in Chittenden County MLS started the year down by 35% in the first two months! Since then the market has rebounded with an increase in volume of over 17%. The number of home sales for the entire year is up over 12%. The average price is down 4.7% to $305,095 while the median price is down 3.8% to $255,000.

SALES OF HOMES PRICED $250,000 AND UNDER WERE UP OVER 25%

Of further interest is that the number of homes sales under $250,000 were up over 28% while the $250,000-500,000 range was up only 2.1% and those over $500,000 were surprisingly exactly the same, 89 sales. It would appear that the Federal Tax Credit program for first time buyers has worked. It remains to be seen what will happen when the extended program runs out at the end of April. Don't miss the fact that a new tax credit has been added on for repeat buyers who have lived in their home for the last 5 years. It's a credit up to $6500!!

Essex Junction
Looking more specifically at Essex Junction to December 18, we see that the volume is up to 72 sales from 51 last year. If we look at the increase in number of sales of those priced under $250,000 we see that the increase is from 27 last years to 44 this year. Thus almost the entire increase in volume is in the under $250,000 range. Perhaps it is another sign that the tax credit did have a significant impact. The average sales price went up while the median price stayed almost the same. At the same time the average price in the village was up 4.9% to $257,089.

Essex
Essex Town was a totally different story. The number of sales dropped almost as much as the village went up, down to 45 sales from 69 a year ago. Both average and median prices were down with the median being down the most, 9.2% to $276,900.

Burlington
Volume was up while prices are down in Vermont's largest city. The number of sales increased over 35% in the Queen City! At the same time average prices dropped over 17% as median prices dropped 5.6%. The increased volume and lower average prices can again probably be attributed to the great increase in lower price home sales that resulted from the tax credit program. The number of homes sold under $250,000 increased over 61% in 2009 in Burlington.

Shelburne
Shelburne median prices up almost 14%! All is not doom and gloom as far as pricing goes as can be seen in Shelburne where the median price increased from $384,000 to $437,000 as sales volume also increased from 49 to 61.

The longer perspective—Looking back 30 years
As we see some sinking of home values I thought it might be worthwhile to look back at where we were 30 years ago. And it just so happens that is when I began keeping records by towns in the county. It is interesting to note that even in the town with the least appreciation of average sale price over that time, the increase was 314%, averaging over 10% per year. Some towns were up over 500% with one over 800%! I had to recheck my math over and over to make sure. But keep in mind this is AVERAGE price. The mythical "average" home has changed over the years so it is not quite apples to apples.