Since the first of the year, inventories — the number of homes for sale — have been increasing and average list prices have been climbing in housing markets around Arkansas.

For the latest inventories and average/median list prices report from the Arkansas Realtors® Association, click here for the Excel file, here for the PDF and here for a useful graphic. It’s not uncommon to see inventories drop at the first of the year and the climb throughout January. When homes don’t sell by the end of the year, people tend to pull them off the market. Similarly, a lot of people decide at the first of the year to list their homes as they get ready to buy houses in the spring and summer.

For buyers, this all means that we’re looking at a very good time to shop for a home. Inventories are up so there are a lot of houses to choose from and average prices are dropping. When you throw in a first-time home buyer tax credit of up to $8,000 and a credit of up to $6,500 for people owning homes but purchasing new primary residences, the picture for buyers looks even better. The tax credit expires at the end of April, so people wanting to take advantage of it are advised to start looking for homes — anyone who gets a house under contract after April 30 won’t be eligible for the credit.

The interest rate on a 30-year, fixed interest mortgage is 4.84 percent today and that should also appeal to buyers.

Every week the Arkansas Realtors Association collects and distributes the average and median list prices and the number of homes in inventory (homes for sale) for single family, new and existing houses in four markets. Those markets are Benton and Washington counties in northwest Arkansas, the Fort Smith/Van Buren areas (Crawford and Sebastian counties) in west Arkansas, the Jonesboro area (Craighead County) in northeast Arkansas and the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway Metropolitan Statistical Area (Faulkner, Grant, Lonoke, Perry, Pulaski and Saline counties) in central Arkansas. While those four markets don’t tell the whole story, looking at them together gives us a pretty good idea about developing trends in markets throughout the state.