Median U.S. home price falls 15.3%
Sales rate jumps 31.6% year-over-year in West
By Inman News, Monday, January 26, 2009.The pace of existing-home sales rose 6.5 percent in December compared to the previous month but was down 3.5 percent compared to December 2007, the National Association of Realtors reported today, and the median price of resale homes dipped for the sixth straight month.
The median price of U.S. resale homes was $175,400 in December, down 15.3 percent compared to December 2007. Regionally, the median price dropped 31.5 percent in the West, 11.4 percent in the Midwest, 8 percent in the South and 7.8 percent in the Northeast in December compared to the same month last year.
The seasonally adjusted annual rate of resale home sales -- which is a measure of a monthly sales rate projected over a 12-month period and adjusted to account for typical seasonal fluctuations in sales activity -- jumped 31.6 percent in the West while falling 14.3 percent in the Northeast, 11.2 percent in the South and 10.3 percent in the Midwest year-over-year in December.
The estimated supply of resale homes for sale in December, based on the sales rate for that month, dropped 17 percent vs. November -- to 9.3 months -- and fell 4.1 percent compared to the December 2007 rate, according to the report.
Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that activity for new-home building permits and starts hit a record low in December, with the rate of building-permit activity plummeting about 50.6 percent compared to the same month last year (see Inman News).
A separate report by the Federal Housing Finance Agency last week found that U.S. home prices dropped 1.8 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from October to November, and for the 12-month period ending in November the index dropped 8.7 percent (see Inman News).
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Submitted by Cindy Marchant on January 26, 2009 - 1:58pm.
I hope I don't sound like I'm ranting...but, it is hard to turn this market around when we have this type of news that is so global affecting local markets. When you regionalize it or better yet, do it by neighborhood this is not the story. I just wrote a post on 2006 to 2008 average prices and I picked 15 of the most popular neighborhoods in Fishers, Indiana. Nine of them did show declines in pricing, but only one of those was over the 15.3% in this article. Most were less than 5%. That one that did decline over 10% was because the 2008 sales had homes without basements and the 2006 homes had them.
There were six neighborhoods that increased in values as high as 11%!
So, I think realtors need to get the word out if they have areas that do not suffer the fate of the "Median US Home Prices fall 15.3%". I'm going crazy with all the media bad news...let's start putting positive information out there!
Submitted by Utah Realtor on January 26, 2009 - 8:43pm.
The Good News is that the amount of inventory is declining. When this hits a normal level prices will start going up again. Hopefully the December Trend of Home Sales keeps going...
Alan Barker, Realtor
Utah Homes for Sale
Submitted by David Auston on January 27, 2009 - 1:03pm.
We should see prices continue to dip a little more and then see prices flatten out for a number of years. If you can see that the price of the home is lower than replicating it, then even now is a great time to buy in certain areas. Namely naples where I'm located.
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