Real Estate Market Ends 2012 On High Note

Increased home sales and higher prices pushed Northwest Arkansas’ 2012 home sales volume past $1 billion.

At A Glance

Small-Town Sales

Below are home sales in smaller Washington and Benton counties for 2012 and 2012. Only towns with at least 50 sales in 2012 are listed.

2011 2012

Siloam Springs 209 186

Centerton 159 162

Lowell 137 121

Pea Ridge 102 104

Farmington 119 96

Gravette 79 81

Garfield 49 70

Cave Springs 29 68

Elkins 44 61

Gentry 85 55

Source: MountData

Sales were up a modest 4 percent, but sales price growth drove volume up 18 percent, according to an annual report by MountData, a real estate marketing firm.

“We are doing better than last year and we are almost to a stable market,” said Paul Bynum, MountData owner and principal broker.

He said the Bentonville market showed the greatest overall year-over-year improvement.

“Bentonville is on fire right now. I think that will continue this year,” Bynum said.

Bentonville had the largest unit sales growth between 2011 and 2012, going from 768 to 895. Springdale was the only one of the area’s five larger towns experiencing a drop in residential units sold last year, dropping from 868 to 824.

Bentonville homes pulled in the highest median price for the year at $202,900. Springdale homes had a median sales price of $105,000.

Median sales price for the region grew 18 percent from $120,000 in 2011 to $142,077 in 2012. Values continue lagging behind the high of $155,000 hit in 2007.

Mike Robinson, managing broker of the Bentonville Crye-Leike office, said he thinks prices will continue to increase, but foreclosures will hold back growth a bit.

By The Numbers

Year-End Sales Volume

2011 2012 Percent Change

Dollar amounts are in millions.

Rogers $197.4 $234.4 19 percent

Fayetteville $191.1 $229.6 20 percent

Bentonville $156 $203.3 30 percent

Springdale $94.6 $114.3 21 percent

Bella Vista $88.9 $106.8 23 percent

Source: MountData

“I’m not expecting great increases, but a lot more homes are being sold,” he said. “It seems like people who have been waiting on the sidelines are ready to get on the market.”

Bynum said cities have taken the spotlight at different times, and now the focus is Bentonville.

Kathy Deck, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas, said many areas of Bentonville have been revitalized the past few years.

“The downtown area is a much more vibrant place than it was five years ago,” she said. “You are seeing more restaurants and shops not just downtown, but along Walton Boulevard.”

Deck described the changes as spectacular.

“They continued to add amenities, even during the recession. They have worked hard at it,” she said.

Bynum also broke down home sales data by ZIP code. Bentonville’s lone ZIP code of 72712 had the most sales at 895. Rogers’ ZIP codes, 72758 and 72756, had 682 and 470 sales respectively.

One component of the housing recovery is an uptick in new home sales.

“New construction is a good indicator of not just the housing market, but the overall local market,” Bynum said. “It ripples through the community and puts people back to work and gets them buying things such as furniture.”

Before the housing bubble burst in 2005, new homes made up more than half of the region’s homes for sale. New construction only accounted for 9 percent of the inventory at the end of last year.

The drop came after builders had trouble securing loans and many new homes sat empty or became rental houses.

Deck said home builders are doing less speculative building.

“Both the builders and the banks want to be much clearer on what the market is,” she said.

Many smaller Northwest Arkansas towns saw home sales flat or down from last year compared to 2011. Robinson pointed to new construction as a main factor.

“Back in 2007 they were building a lot of new homes and that stopped,” he said. “That has not picked up again in the smaller towns.”

Growth in the larger towns will eventually spill over into the rest of the county, Robinson said.

“I think we are going to have an outstanding year in real estate,” he said.

Bynum agrees that signs are pointing to another strong year.

“The stats are telling me we are recovering,” he said. “The worst is behind us and we are selling homes at a rate we haven’t seen for the past six years.”

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Agents, Companies

Bynum’s annual report also tracks the area’s real estate companies and agents.

The industry shrunk from 377 real estate agencies in 2011 to 317 last year. Twelve new companies joined the Multiple Listing Service in 2012 while 72 companies ceased to exist.

The Multiple Listing Service is a marketing database set up by a group of cooperating real estate brokers.

The market only lost a handful of agents over the same time period, dropping from 1,641 agents to 1,596.

He said it is not unusual to see year-to-year fluctuations in the company and agent numbers, but the large drop last year was a bit out of the norm.

Bynum said he considered a business closed in his database if it did not report a sale in the past three months.

“Almost all the companies we lost were mom-and-pop operations that just couldn’t make it any more,” he said.

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