Best and worst places to be selling a home

Where's the easiest place in the Baltimore area to sell a home for the full asking price? Catonsville, by one measure.

Real estate brokerage ZipRealty, analyzing the "hottest" and "coldest" ZIP codes in metro areas it tracks, said the average sales price in in 21228 was 99.9 percent of the average listing price during the last three months of the year. That's a difference of $257.

On the other end of the spectrum is 21216 in West Baltimore, where sellers got 87 percent of what they'd asked for. With an average list price of about $103,000, that's a difference of more than $13,000.

Sales price vs. asking price isn't the only measure of a market's health. Sometimes it's just a yardstick of how realistic sellers are being about what buyers will pay. But it's certainly one way to get at the push-and-pull of supply compared with demand.

Here's ZipRealty's full hot-and-cold list:

HOT:

1. Catonsville, 21228. Average listing price: $282,701. Average selling price: $282,444. Sales price as a percentage of list price: 99.9 percent.

2. Laurel, 20723. Average listing price: $319,093. Average selling price: $315,355. Sales price as a percentage of list price: 98.8 percent.

3 (tie). Laurel, 20724. Average listing price: $274,333. Average selling price: $270,062. Sales price as a percentage of list price: 98.4 percent.

3 (tie). Abingdon, 21009. Average listing price: $241,064. Average selling price: $237,295. Sales price as a percentage of list price: 98.4 percent.

5. Nottingham, 21236. Average listing price: $241,716. Average selling price: $237,644. Sales price as a percentage of list price: 98.3 percent.

COLD:

1. Baltimore, 21216. Average listing price: $103,211. Average selling price: $89,783. Sales price as a percentage of list price: 87 percent.

2. Aberdeen, 21001. Average listing price: $253,409. Average selling price: $236,710. Sales price as a percentage of list price: 93.4 percent.

3. Baltimore, 21215. Average listing price: $93,048. Average selling price: $87,131. Sales price as a percentage of list price: 93.6 percent.

4. Baltimore, 21209. Average listing price: $291,610. Average selling price: $273,266. Sales price as a percentage of list price: 93.7 percent.

5. Edgewater, 21037. Average listing price: $521,505. Average selling price: $489,545. Sales price as a percentage of list price: 93.9 percent.