All-Time High Home Values in Matsu Valley

*The following is the transcript from my weekly market update, this week covering the MatSu Valley. For the Video, click the link MatSu Market Update *

My name is Jamin Goecker. I’m a realtor in south central Alaska and my mission is to help you to build an intentional and significant legacy for yourself and your family by coaching you in real estate and to help you do that today I created a market update for what's going on in the Matsu Valley year to date. So this continues to be a pretty interesting market to watch we're still seeing kind of some fluctuating around here. We'll be looking at the residential, condo and the multi-family market and then wrapping it all together in a nice summary at the end.

Residential

Active Inventory

In the residential market the first thing that really stands out to me is the inventory has gone down a little bit from where it was this time last year but not by a whole lot there was about 370 homes that were on the market this time last year in the Matsu Valley now it's about 350. So we see a little bit of a dip not too much though

??????????????Sold Units

Secondly, on the residential side the thing that really stands out to me is the units that have sold has actually increased very slightly so even though we have a decrease in the over overall inventory we are seeing an increase in the number of properties that have sold there is roughly about 200 well not roughly there was 241 homes that sold this time last year for the most current month that we have all the data for and this year it's 246. So not a huge swing in either direction there but it's significant because we have less inventory and we have more properties that have actually sold.

Average Sales Price

The next thing that we need to look at is the average sold price the reason that I know most of you are tuning in anyway so average sold price in the Matsu Valley has gone up significantly over the past year. The average sold price year to date this time last year was about $301,000 and now it's about $347,000. That is a 15.21% increase and that's pretty significant, obviously, but I'll save that for the summary.

Condos

Active Inventory

Now we're going to take a look at condos obviously pretty small market but I said I was going to cover it so we're going to cover it anyway. In the Matsu Valley they're not as popular as what you might find in Anchorage or other big cities in the lower 48. It's really not that's not the reason people go to the Matsu Valley to go live in a condo association but for those of you who are interested there were nine condos on the market this time last year. Now there are four.

Sold Units

The next thing about condos is that the number of properties that actually sold this time last year was four and now it's seven so proportionally it’s big move.

?Average Sold Price

?Finally, what we're seeing is the average sold price for condos has increased by roughly nine percent going from about $171,000 this time last year and about $191,000 this time this year. That's significant because we are obviously seeing an increase for the average sold price in condos. In past years the price for condos has increased and decreased over the years so that mostly has to do with just the size in the market, so it's hard to get the get a consistent law of averages when you don't have a big pool to be drawing from with all your Data. But yes average sold price is definitely up.

??????????????Multi-Family

??????????????Active Inventory

In the multi-family market we're seeing a pretty big decrease in the number of inventory because it went from 33 multi-family properties that were available this time last year and now it's about 22. So we are seeing roughly a 33% drop in the inventory for multi-family properties.

Sold Units

Next what we're seeing is the number of properties that have actually sold has increased from 10 this time last year to 13 this time this time this year so we'll talk about more why that's significant in the summary.

Average Sold Price

The next thing that's significant is the average sold price for multi-family properties in the Matsu

Valley has increased by 7.72% and the average sold price went from about $420,000 to about $453,000. That’s a sizable swing there. We haven't seen dramatic increases in the appreciation like that in recent times here in the recent data so that's significant.

??????????????Summary

?As far as the residential market goes yes inventory remains low and that's probably going to remain the case for the foreseeable future, partly because a lot of sellers are just looking around and thinking, “Okay I love the price I can get for my home but I am just having a hard time getting my mind around having to be on the flip side of that and having to go find a place for myself at that point. So I'm just going to keep what I have.”

The low inventory is probably going to remain for the foreseeable future here and the demand is going to remain high because of the interest rates. What we're seeing in the data is inventory is still lower than what it was before but it's starting to balance out. We're starting to see these um signs of hope at the end of the tunnel; things are starting to not be as drastic as it was the year before so that's

Promising.

??????????????The condo side we're obviously seeing average sold price has been going up. The inventory is pretty low but it's such a small pool it's hard to say exactly what's happening because literally one property can throw the entire thing off, so it's hard to come up with any average takeaways as far as that goes but at the moment the average sold price is up for condos.

In the multi-family market this is really interesting to me and the reason is we are seeing that unlike the residential side, where it's starting to come back and starting to show signs that we're roughly about where we were the year before, there is no sign of that happening on the multi-family market side. The reason for that, if I can throw a theory out there, is there are a lot of investors in the Matsu Valley and they like their property because their other big option is to find something in the Municipality of Anchorage. If you're an investor in the Municipality of Anchorage, it's not the worst thing ever, but also the Assembly does not make it an easy job to be a landlord.

For that reason, there's really an urge from investors to move out to the Matsu Valley to gain some more freedom and more support for what it is that they’re trying to do for the community.

Obviously average sold price is still up but I have a hard time looking at that and just using that as the barometer and the big standard for how we're doing because multi-family property includes everything from the little duplex all the way up to the big commercial 30 plex property.

I hope this was useful for you. If you're thinking about making a move up here to Alaska, don't hesitate to reach out to me. I have a free relocation guide I would love to send to you.

The link for my website is down below and in the little comment section when you’re registering, put in there that you would like to receive the relocation guide and I'll send that your way.