Report: Gap Between Listing Prices, Closing Prices Narrows in 2012

Last year was the year of the seller, according to data released by real estate broker ""ZipRealty"":http://www.ziprealty.com/.

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The company's List Price to Close Price Ratio Report--based on multiple listing service data covering 32 U.S. markets--shows that the gap between the listing price and closing price of an average home sold in the United States continued to narrow last year as market conditions gave the advantage to sellers.

According to the report, the list-to-close price ratio started 2012 at 97.5 percent, an increase of 40 basis points from 2011. ZipRealty's data as of December 2012 shows the ratio reaching 98.3 percent, double the increase seen from 2011 to 2012.

Seller dominance was strongest in California, which was home to half of the top 10 cities for home sellers in 2012. The list includes San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Orange County.

Other cities on the list include Las Vegas, Denver, Tucson, Portland, and Seattle.

""A limited inventory of homes on the market, combined with the extremely low cost of mortgage financing, has resulted in homes selling above asking price in many western markets, boosting the average listing to closing price ratio,"" explained Lanny Baker, president and CEO of ZipRealty.

ZipRealty's report also analyzes median days on market, which continues to decline in many of the metro areas served by the company. According to ZipRealty, the median days a home spent on the market dropped to 44 nationwide in 2012, a 23 percent decline from 57 days in 2011.

The West also showed the most annual improvement in days on market, with homes in the Silicon Valley seeing the steepest decline (from 32 days in 2011 to 17 days last year).

""The median amount of time that homes are listed on the market before they sell has shortened by more than two weeks since last year, and in some areas we are seeing one-in-five newly listed homes sell in less than seven days,"" Baker said. ""Multiple-bid situations are also increasingly common in the markets we reviewed.""