Here are a couple visual representations of the Truckee Tahoe real estate market recovery to date. One graph reflects the median sales by price and the other average sales by price. We often speak about the specific statistics that justify our growing confidence in this market; however, I thought these visual graphs to be compelling.
For those unclear on the difference between median and average: Median is the middle number in a set of sales. For example, there have been 379 residential transactions in our MLS year to date. The current median sale is the 190th when ranking by price, which was the sale of a home located at 11133 Lausanne Way in Tahoe Donner for $440,000. This statistic is most often used because it is not swayed by extremes in the high and low end of the market; rather measures the same number of sales higher and lower to provide a consistent, apples to apples comparison.
On the other hand, average price is more vulnerable to extremes in our market including very low priced fractional shares (not included in my statistical analyses) and, more significantly, by the mega-lakefront sales. We’ve been using this statistic quite a bit recently as it more accurately reflects the improvement in the luxury segment of the North Lake Tahoe real estate market.
