Alan Zibel
USA Today
WASHINGTON — Home sales and median prices fell in the second quarter, the latest sign of the breadth of the housing market decline, according to report by the National Association of Realtors Thursday.
Nevertheless, home sales rose in “some of the markets with the steepest and fastest price drops,” said Lawrence Yun, the trade group’s chief economist. “Buyers in these areas are responding to deeply discounted home prices.”
Nevada and California were the only states to show sales gains in the second quarter compared to last year.
Sales were up 18% in Nevada after median prices fell by nearly 24% in the Las Vegas area last year. Sales in California were up 3.7% but prices in its major cities, Los Angeles, Riverside and Sacramento, plunged by 30% or more.
Nationally, sales fell 16.3% since last year, according to NAR’s data.
The Realtors group said median prices for existing single-family homes dropped in 115 of 150 metropolitan areas in the April-June period, while 35 metro areas saw prices increase.
Among the bright spots, prices of homes sold rose by more than 7% in Yakima, Wash., Binghamton, N.Y., Amarillo, Texas and Charleston, W.Va.
Nationally, the median home price fell 7.6% to $206,500.
As foreclosures soar, banks and mortgage investors are also facing a pileup of foreclosed properties and are cutting prices dramatically.
Foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac said that it had more than 750,000 foreclosed homes in its database of properties for sale, equal to about 17% of the 4.5 million U.S. homes that were up for sale in June.
Nationwide, more than 272,000 homes received at least one foreclosure-related notice in July, up 55% from about 175,000 last year and up 8% from June, RealtyTrac said. That means one in every 464 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing last month.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
