If you don’t like roller coasters, don’t read local market trends.  They might make you nauseous, or they might cause you to get really excited.  It’s a toss up.  There has been a minor decline in overall available properties in the Winchester / Frederick County area.

The total available properties as of May 1, 2012 is 571.  That is down 9 since April 2012.  That is not a substantial difference in a few weeks.  Short sales and REOs continue to vacillate around the same numbers as the April numbers.  In April, Winchester had 19 distressed listings, and Frederick County had 73.  May 1st shows only minor differences in distressed listings.  Winchester currently has 15, and Frederick County has 71.  No major moves.

The nose bleed part of the local real estate ride is in the pending sales.  Frederick County currently has 230 pending sales, while Winchester has 61.  Of those total pending sales, 49% are distressed properties.  As bad as that is, it is a 2% decline from the Jan-Feb 51% number.  Frederick County has 35% distressed pending sales, and Winchester has 46% distressed pending sales. 

The good news in all of these numbers is that April was made up of 16% new distressed listings while May has fallen to 15%.  The trend is a decline from January to the current date.  January started the year with 18.8% distressed listings.  February saw a decline to 17%, and March dropped to 16%.  That’s a trend all of us can appreciate.