How much of a bargain are 'bargain' listings?
If you spend any time looking at real estate listings (trust us: we do), the word "bargain" tends to crop up a lot. The number-crunchers at Trulia recently did an analysis on whether listings with the word "bargain" in them actually constitute a good deal. Local listings ran the gamut.
According to analysts at Trulia, if you see a listing tagged "bargain" in Camden, New Jersey, it's likely that it really is a steal. They determined that on average, homes with the word in their description came at about a 10.5 percent discount below the median listing price. In Camden that means a bargain home would be somewhere around $179,000 in a city where the median listing price is closer to $199,900. Those findings make Camden number eight on the top ten list of housing markets with the largest discount on bargain properties.
Of course, analysts also looked at which markets are rife with listings that claim to be bargains but actually don't offer big discounts. On that end of things? Trulia's favorite Franken-neighborhood, Montgomery-Bucks-Chester counties. That community sits at number five on the list of housing markets with the smallest discount (3.3 percent) on bargain properties.
The moral of this Trulia story is to trust a bargain, but verify it. You can see the whole report here.
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