It looks like housing market recovery is far from being a possibility since September 30. Government tax credit for homebuyers wound down.
The National Association of Realtors or NAR reported that even if home prices went down,
sales have plunged more than 25% as opposed to homes sold during the previous quarter.
It seems there is hardly a more appealing time to buy property. Without any buyers, the sales volume continues to decline. The housing market may just have to think of other ways to attract more buyers.
According to NAR President, Ron Phipps, considering the relationship between mortgage interest rates, housing prices, and median family income, the buying power of today’s market matches the highest levels recorded in 1970.
Sales volume increased during the first few months of 2010. Homebuyers began to purchase for them to qualify for tax credit. They had as much as $8,000 off their tax bills. For buyers to qualify, they had to have their contracts ready by the end of April. They had to close deals by the end of September.
Prices seem to fluctuate. The national median price of $177,900 for a single-family home sold during the quarter went down 0.2% about the same period a year ago. This went up 0.6% during the second quarter of this year. In the Midwest, prices decreased 3% to $145,600. In the Southern region prices were down 1.9% and 0.4% in the Western region. In Ocala, Florida, the median price went down 20% to $82,200. This was the biggest drop as compared to other areas. In Youngstown, Ohio, the median sale price was at $60,400. This is the lowest median price on record.
But, there are regions where price improvement was observed. In the metro area, Burlington, Vermont had the biggest gain. The median price of $ 286,300 was 17.6% higher than what was recorded 12 months earlier. In the Northeast, single-family home prices went up to 2.5% to $253,400. The highest median price recorded was in San Jose, California. It was $628,700 during the quarter. While Honolulu was at $628,100 just a little lower as compared to San Jose.
You may think this is a problem, the condominium prices are worse that prices for single-family houses. On record, the national median fell 3.9% in the last 12 months to $171,400.
Great loss year after year was observed in Palm Bay, Florida, where the price went down 32% to $73,000. Condo prices for Jacksonville, Florida went down 31% to $63,200 while prices plunged 26.6% to $73,300 in Phoenix.
In New York, however, prices went up 34.5% to 400,000. The highest recorded as compared to other cities.
