December Home Sales in Belle Sherman

Let’s take a look at Belle Sherman home sales for December (Belle Sherman is a neighborhood in Ithaca, New York, on East Hill next to Cornell University).

Two single family homes were sold last month.

The first home (pictured above) was 203 Pearl Street. It sits between Worth Street and Miller Street and has 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and 2,018 square feet. It sold for $540,000.

The second home was 201 Worth Street. It sits at the corner of Cornell Street and has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and 2,564 square feet. It sold for $465,000.

Map of Belle Sherman Home Sales 1998-Present

Here’s a map of Belle Sherman home sales. Home sales dating back to 2014 are organized by year, and sales from 1998-2013 are all grouped together.

Belle Sherman Real Estate Historical Trends

I was interested to see how the value of Belle Sherman real estate has changed over time, and fortunately, we have good data going back to 1998.

One way we compare homes of different sizes is to look at price per square foot (P/SF), and so this first chart looks at how P/SF has changed from 1999 to the present.

From 1999 to the present, P/SF has increased from $59 to $212, with a record of $219 set in November. That’s an increase of 370%.

This is helpful, but we can do better. Let’s pretend we bought a generic home in 1999 with 1,800 square feet, which is about the neighborhood average. Based on our P/SF data from above, we bought our home for $105k. In this next chart, we plot how our generic home has appreciated over the last 22 years.

Today, we could probably sell for $380k. That works out to 6.02% appreciation over 22 years. Not bad!