The Tale of Two Ogden Cities: In Charts

In Ogden there is a strong bifurcating force called Harrison Blvd.  I was toying around with the MLS statistics the other day and I thought I would explore exactly what the differences are between the "East Bench" which is located east of Harrison Blvd. and bounded by 20th Street to 36th Street as compared to "The Trolly District" which encompasses 20th to 30th Streets west of Harrison Blvd to Washington Blvd.  

Queue the charts please....

In this first chart, you can see that the Trolley District has had more sales per month on average than the East Bench.  Part of that may have to do with density being lower on the East Bench.  Its interesting to see that sales peaked on the bench in the summer of 2006 while the Trolley District had a cathartic surge in the summer of 2007 (which then quickly collapsed as the subprime fiasco tanked the mortgage markets).  The moving average for sales volumes for both areas of Ogden are back to 2001-2002 levels.

 
This next chart shows the median days on market for each month.  You can see that during the bubble that market times were extremely short for the East Bench and moderate in the Trolley District.  Since sales volume has been so low for the last several years there is a ton of noise in the chart.  The moving average helps us get a better idea where things are trending.  Market times are now longer for the East Bench than they are for the Trolley District on average.

Finally, here is the chart that everyone wants to see.  Where are values headed?  Well, on average, they have been headed down.  Again, notice the "noise" that exists in recent years due to the low sales volume.  The data shows the range of values.  Fortunately, the movement down has been so slow that it is still profitable to fix and resell homes...as long as you don't take years to complete your project.  Another interesting thing to see is that homes on the East Bench are typically priced 50% more than homes in the Trolley District.  East Bench values also tend to lead in price movement.  Additionally, while the Trolley District has returned to pre-bubble price levels, the East Bench has not yet given up all of its gains.  This may have to do with the fact that more homeowners live in their homes on the East Bench than those in the Trolley District.  Owner occupants are less likely to sacrifice on price when they sell their homes thus making prices "sticky".