Property Sales

A For Sale sign recently appeared in front of a house in my neighborhood and within a few days a "sold" label was added.  I understand that within five days of the house hitting the market, there had been three offers of at least the asking price.  I've heard similar anecdotes from others.  All this is an indicator that the real estate market might be perking up notwithstanding a recent rise in new foreclosures.

To get a better view of what's going on with home sales, I scrolled through the 181 deeds for property in Lowell that have been recorded from August 1st until today.  Here's the breakdown: 100 of the 181 were arms length sales between unrelated parties; 44 involved inter-family transfers for no consideration; 31 involved sales of previously foreclosed properties by banks to third parties; and 6 involved some other type of transaction, typically a business-to-business swap for no consideration.

In the past when I've done this kind of query, the ratio of sales for consideration to sales for no consideration has been closer to one to one.  For the past five weeks, the percentage of arms length sales is up considerably which corroborates the view that housing is picking up a bit.