Every month the Greater Capital Association of Realtors (GCAR) compiles a short video of the latest real estate market statistics. December, like the past several months, has soft numbers for the Albany, Saratoga, and surrounding Capital Region home and real estate market. The median home sale price slipped from December of 2010, to $180,00. The inventory of active homes is down 6.2% to 11.7 months of inventory. The decline in inventory is movement in a positive direction. At the current inventory and sales levels, it would take 11.7 months to sell all of the active homes. A balanced real estate market is considered to have a 5-6 month supply of inventory. A greater inventory supply is a buyers’ market and a smaller inventory supply is a sellers’ market. If the current trend continues, the market will realign towards a seller’s market.

Overall, 2011 proved to tough year for the Albany real estate market, as well as the surrounding Capital Region. Total closed sales fell 6.8% to 7,097 home sales, down from 7,616 home sales. The median home sale price in 2011 essentially remained stable from the prior year, down 0.9% from $188,000 to $186,282. But the 2011 median sale price is still above the 2009 price of $184,000.

I’ll make sure to update this monthly as the numbers become available during the end of every month. As always, any questions just email, call, or tweet.