Homes in 77355 Are Selling Faster, Even as Area Sales Slip

July was a slower month for home sales across the Tomball and Magnolia area. Sales fell year over year in four of the five ZIP codes tracked. That is the sentence most people will read, and it is true.

It is also not the whole picture for Magnolia. In 77355, the average time a house sat on the market dropped 16.42 percent from a year earlier, from 67 days to 56. Eleven days is not a rounding error when you are the one paying a mortgage on a house you have already moved out of.

Across the five ZIP codes, median prices rose in three and market time fell in three. The largest price jump was in 77375, on the Tomball side, where the median went from $342,450 to $403,500, up 17.83 percent. In the $250,000 to $499,999 range, the band most local buyers actually shop in, 236 homes sold in July.

Fewer sales and faster sales at the same time usually means fewer houses are listed rather than fewer people looking. A tighter list of choices moves the ones that are priced right and leaves the ones that are not. Sellers reading this should take the 56 days as a description of correctly priced houses, not a promise about theirs.

One caution on all of it. These are one month of figures from one local firm's reading of the market, and a single July does not make a trend. If you are deciding whether to list this fall, the useful move is to ask an agent what has actually closed on your street this summer, not what the area average did.

The numbers come from The Renee Leslie Group's July market data for the Tomball and Magnolia ZIP codes.