Louisville home sales jump 18 percent over previous year, while values hold steady

Louisville home sales continue their winning ways, while home values are also improved to start 2013.

This past year has been a great improvement in real estate, both nationally, and here in Louisville, Ky. After the peak in 2005, both 2006 and 2007 saw more than 10,000 homes trade hands here in Jefferson County.

Then came the recession.

In the five past years, we haven’t reach 9,000 sales. Last year came up just shy with 8,981.

So how does 2013 begin? Not with a bang, but with incremental improvement. Let’s compare only January home sales in Jefferson County.

Louisville home sales during the month of January

Home sales of 619 this past month is a 17.9% improvement over the previous year.

Home values did not have a good January, but watching the cyclical trends we learn that home values are more likely to decline during the least active trading months.

Even still, with the median home price of $128,000 for the month, we’re up by $4,000 over the previous year.

Despite the baffling Kiplinger report, 2012 was a positive year for homeowners in Louisville. Signs indicate that 2013 will be even better.

I prefer to focus on the 1-year trend-line (which you can see in the top graph), which puts us up 4.7% over January, 2012.