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When standing in the Missoula valley these two areas make up most all of the hillside homes you’ll see on the south end of the valley that have been built up mostly before the mid-1980’s. A little more south and west you’ll find the newer neighborhoods in Linda Vista and Maloney Ranch, I’ll report them in a separate post. Generally it seems that Missoula started expanding first in the Farviews area in the 50’s and 60’s and then moved across to the South Hills area in the 70’s and 80’s. The styles of homes follow suit. Farviews boasts a lot of homes with flat roofs, giant 2-level fireplaces, smaller kitchens, and many homes with wet-bars in the basement. Moving over to the South Hills we get a lot of basic split-level homes and 1-level ranchers.
In 2010 we saw 127 total residential sales in these combined areas with a median sales price of $209,900. The average time on market for these homes that sold was 108 days. The median list price on the 127 sales was at $212,500 showing a pretty strong final sales price at 99% of your original listing price. I’m seeing that there were 9 foreclosure sales in this area which makes up for 7% of the market.
On to 2011, a very small decrease in volume of sales at 124, and the median sales price slid down just a bit as well at $207,450. The average time on market extended out a bit to 131 days. The median list price on these sold homes was $217,250 which shows that homes were selling for almost 95% of their original listing price. Foreclosure sales climbed up a bit as well here with 15 sales, making up 12% of the market in 2011.
This area was a popular buy in 2010 because of the mostly affordable homes found in the South Hills area that were appealing to first time home buyers. I was a little surprised to see such a high list to sales ratio, it suggests that people were not really negotiating much but agreeing to pay pretty close to list price to get a home up there. 2011 shows a bit of a return to a normal market where sellers were having to come down nearly 5% to get their home sold and the time on market extended out a bit. Foreclosures climbed much like all other areas and are starting to have a bigger effect on values in these areas.
The 2011 absorption rates for this area taking in the last 12 months of sales numbers shows 6.87 months worth of total inventory is currently listed for sale in these areas. That’s fairly healthy but much like all other neighborhoods I’m thinking it’ll climb much higher as spring approaches.
