Focus On Mesa Oaks & Country Club

Over the river and up the hill we go to take a look at recent activity in our high-end neighborhoods, Mesa Oaks and the Country Club. For a little background on these areas, you can go back to the first post I did on the area several months ago.

The inventory level has been pretty stable up there despite the decrease in overall inventory in our market. This is mostly because unlike most of the rest of our market, this area hasn't been hit hard by distressed sales. At the moment, we have 12 active listings in these areas, with only one REO, 2 short sales, and all of the other 9 are traditional sellers. We only have one contingent sale up there, a short sale awaiting lien holder approval.

Sales activity in these neighborhoods has been slower than the market norm. We only have one pending unit in the area (an REO), with only 3 sales in the past three months. One of those was a short sale, and the other two were traditional sales. Sales in the high end tend to go a little slower in these parts pretty much all the time so that's not shocking, especially with the absence of aggressively priced REO's.

With so few sales, it's almost impossible to identify any kind of price trend. I'd be inclined to say that we're probably flat to slightly decreasing up here because of the lack of activity. I suspect that when we start to see the market rebound, these neighborhoods will follow. At least some of the sales up here have traditionally relied on move-up buyers, and those are as rare as hen's teeth of late. Once we start to see some more recovery in the low-mid range, I would expect a robust recovery in the high end.

Hope everyone has a beautiful and peaceful Christmas. I'll see you back here next week for Monday morning numbers and whatever I can dream up for later in the week.