Each month I publish a real estate market report for Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, which includes this graph:



Overly simplified, you'll notice in this graph that sales are slow, but prices are steady:



Certainly better than the many markets (even in Virginia) where the pace of sales is increasing, but prices took a huge hit:



At the same time, our market could have transitioned more gracefully than it did --- perhaps if prices had dropped a bit more, sales wouldn't have slowed down so much:



The big question now, is WHAT IS NEXT for our local real estate market.  I think another big drop in sales and a significant drop in prices is likely overly pessimistic:



Yet it's also probably too optimistic to think we'll see sales pace and prices rebound overnight:



My best guess?  We'll see another year of negligible changes in price, but we'll see a small increase in sales pace:



But what do YOU think??


** Of note, the 2009 bar is extrapolated from Jan-Sept 2009 sales.