Before you really get into the nitty gritty of putting your old place on the Ajax homes for sale list and delving into the individual real estate listings in St. Louis, it may help you to learn some statistics regarding the city's market. Why? So you'll know what prices are reasonable or average or cheap and you'll have some idea of how your home's value will fare in the coming months and years. St. Louis, Missouri is different from every other city, so just because you know how things are in New York City, you can't assume the same goes for St. Louis. Here are some pertinent stats for that city, accurate to late November of 2009.

Average Listing Price

The average listing is an aggregate of all prices asked by sellers divided by the number of homes on the market. This value is useful to buyers who have little to no experience with the St. Louis market, perhaps because they live in Lawrence Park, Toronto or because this is their first time buying a home. Keep in mind, though, that this is only the ASKING price. Homeowners set the asking price, so it may not always be an accurate representation of the home's actual market value. In St. Louis, the average listing price is just over $222,000, which is based on nearly 7,500 listings.

Median Sale Price

For the potential home buyer looking for figure that's closer to what they might actually be paying for a home, the median sale price is the statistic to look at. To reach this value, statisticians lay out the price each home in the city is sold for, and then take the middling value. This is a different method from the aggregate or mean method used for the average listing price, which is most often used in Toronto real estate statistics. The value for St. Louis is just over $77,242 based on more than 1,700 homes sold.

Getting Specific

While the above values give general figures representing a wide range of homes of all sizes, shapes, and locations, to get a more accurate valuation on the home you personally will be looking for, you can make use of the price per square foot. You don't often see the price per square foot used to rate real estate in East York but it can be helpful in calculating the average price if you know what size home you want. In St. Louis, it's $70.

Trends

St. Louis has not begun to recover from the mortgage crisis or depression yet, for all figures are still trending downward by around 30% per year. This is good news for you if you're trading for Oakville real estate but bad news if you're going to want to sell again soon.