Stressed, or Distressed, or Both?

I posted last week on LoCo Musings and LoCo Market Stats analyzing how much of our active real estate market in Loudoun is currently made up of ‘distressed’ sales, meaning short sales or foreclosures. What I found is that it varies depending where in the county you are, and also what home type you are looking at. Here’s the overall picture for the county:

The vast majority of listings, nearly three quarters (74%) are ‘normal’, meaning no lender or bank involvement.(Here’s a post I wrote explaining the difference between short sales and foreclosures.) Personally I had expected that the 6% would be higher, although foreclosure listings can be bought in a much faster time frame, typically, than short sales, so they tend to go under contract more quickly. Here’s how the market looks in Sterling, specifically:

Comparing the Sterling active listings to all of Loudoun County, and we see that there are more short sales and slightly more foreclosures, so that 8% more of the active market is ‘distressed’ in Sterling. However, it very much depends on what type of home you are looking at in Sterling. Here’s how it breaks down by home type:

Detached, single family homes in Sterling actually have fewer short sales than the overall Loudoun short sale percentage, although a bit more foreclosures; leaving the percentage of ‘normal’ transactions the same (and higher than that for Sterling as a whole). The active townhomes in Sterling, though, are very hard hit with short sales, a full 37%, so only 58% of active townhome listings are non-distressed. The condo market, not unlike in Ashburn, has nearly half of active listings classified as short sales or foreclosures, the majority of those being short sales.

Would you like to know how this specifically affects a particular neighborhood? Please fill out a quick form with a few property details and I can give you very detailed statistics.

Cheers,
Heather