One of the things that attracted me to Nest Realty oh so many years ago was their focus on good, accurate data. Zillow is a popular tool, but it can’t replace solid, real-world data based on live sales. And that’s where the New River Valley Mid-Year (and Annual) Market Report comes in. Every quarter (every month, really), we put together a look at what’s happening in the market, both the good AND the bad, and we just published our 2020 Mid-Year Market Report for the New River Valley real estate market.

It goes without saying that 2020 has been a hot mess. In March, as we prepared to close the office and begin working remotely. we discussed as an office that we weren’t sure where the next few weeks were going but we were prepared to do what was necessary to keep things operational. Yes, I’ll admit that we thought COVID might be a month-long “distraction” – oh the naivety. And I’ll also admit that I thought there was a decent chance the real estate market would come to a screeching halt, but that hasn’t happened yet. (Emphasis yet – I’ve been through two major market corrections as an agent, so I’m not willing to say we won’t be further impacted here in the New River Valley. But for the time being …)

So what are we seeing in the New River Valley real estate market right now? Well, for starters, the median sales price for the first half of 2020 was $229,750 (up 5%), there were 680 sales (down <1%), and available homes were down almost 12%. Those last two numbers are likely reflective of what we’ve gone through in the first two quarters – buyers AND sellers were initially on edge and so fewer homes were listed and purchased. I think it’s likely that we’ll see both of those numbers go down even further in Q3 and Q4, but we’ll have to continue to wait and see.

One particular item of note – Radford saw significant increases in every category we measure, which is a change from previous reports. With no major investment in the area that would drive buyers to the community due to new jobs it’s an interesting uptick, and possible that buyers are finally finding the variety of housing styles in Radford, combined with the walkability of the community, desirable. It’ll be interesting to watch that further in subsequent reports.

You can download the whole report here, and feel free to connect with me if you’d like to chat further!