On the first Tuesday of each month, I post a recap of the prior 13 months of San Juan County real estate market statistics.
Why 13 months?
It's always good (and interesting) to be able to look at the same month last year to add some context to the charts.
It's still important, however, to not let one or even two months dictate what a trend might be. Especially here in San Juan County, one or two months trend for any chart in any direction is not an indication of what the trend may be next month. Because of the relatively low number of sales each year, compared to other counties, and the diverse nature of the real estate here, trends can be tricky to judge.
One way to better understand a market is look at it multiple ways. Here are two charts with the same data. One is a "Histogram"(On the right). This shows how many sales are in each price category. The other, on the left, is a "scatter" chart. Both show the concentration of sales and are important to an Appraiser, to show the context of how the subject property fits into it's market, price-wise.
NUMBER OF SALES
Like I said earlier, be careful in drawing conclusions from limited data. One of the reasons I use charts in my appraisal practice is that they are based on numbers and numbers don't lie. Well, maybe the fib a little, depending on what they are, how they are presented, what they represent and how they are interpreted.
While prices and demand may be seasonally soft right now, the January numbers are a limited number of lower, smaller sales, biasing the price trend down in the chart.
The last chart ---> is really interesting for an Appraiser and really shows me a lot of things. This is a chart of the sale price/sf, comparing the areas that I do appraisals in, San Juan, Island, Skagit and Whatcom counties. Each colored line represents the average sale price trend for a different county. Not only is San Juan County the highest by far, which is not a surprise, but it's also the most volatile. The squigglier the line, the more varied the real estate is and greater the variation in sales price. I can also see that Island county has been declining since September 2023, but Whatcom and Skagit are holding the line, so to speak.
Extra bonus points if you can use the term "Squigglier" in a conversation with your friends.
I'll be using the San Juan County Appraisal Blog to put out stats on a more or less regular basis. Let me know what you think is a comment and lets get the conversation going.
