January 2009 was a slower month for Mount Vernon Ohio home sales activity.  As of January 31st, 2009 the Knox County MLS had only reported 8 residential homes sales in the Mount Vernon Ohio school district so far this year.  Last year during the same time period the Knox County MLS reported 14 homes sales. This means that 2009 saw roughly a 40% decrease in home sales activity during the first month of year.  This certainly doesn't mean that prices are down by 40% but that in 2009 there were simply fewer homes sales.

Each month I spend a substantial amount of time after business hours researching the market activity that is reported to the Knox County Multiple Listing Service.  This month it is very obvious why the home sales are down and that is that many of the January home sales were bank owned foreclosure listings.  You might be asking yourself why this would make the overall home sale numbers lower and the answer is banks do not need to buy a replacement home when they sell their repo listings.  When the homeowner successfully sells their current home they generally replace it with another home purchase essentially accounting for 2 sales or transactions.  When we sell a bank owned foreclosure the bank is not taking their money and buying another home.  This is a very big part of the January 2009 sales drop in Mount Vernon, Ohio.

This may sound like bad news but in reality it isn't bad news at all.  The slow down is simply a small ripple in the Mount Vernon Ohio real estate market which I believe will begin to smooth out in months to come.  Remember that all real estate activity goes in cycles and it's good to move some of the Mount Vernon Ohio  foreclosures so that in the more active months to come many of those Mount Vernon bank owned listings will already be sold when the spring market warms up.  This is important because it can be difficult for an average homeowner to be able to compete financially with HUD foreclosure or a bank who simply needs to get their non performing asset off their books.

I created some special real estate links that will take you directly to homes, condos and bank owned listings for sale that are located in and around Mount Vernon and Knox County Ohio 

Mount Vernon Ohio homes for sale

Mount Vernon Ohio condos for sale

Knox County Ohio bank owned homes

Sam Miller