The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reports that prices are down and sales are a lot less terrible than many might think. How much of a crisis is 5 million home sales a year?

Existing-home sales –- including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops -– rose 2.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.03 million units in February from a pace of 4.89 million in January, but remain 23.8 percent below the 6.60 million-unit level in February 2007. The sales pace has been in a fairly narrow range since last September…

The national median existing-home price for all housing types was $195,900 in February, down 8.2 percent from a year earlier when the median was $213,500. Because the slowdown in sales from a year ago is greater in high-cost areas, there is a downward pull to the national median with relatively fewer sales in higher priced markets.

Home prices within metropolitan areas are more telling. The most recent data shows roughly half of the metro areas in the U.S. with price increases, with healthy gains in markets such as Oklahoma City and Trenton, N.J. “In other areas such as Sacramento, a rapid price decline has induced buyers to come into the market and sales are now rising,” Yun said. “The relationship between home prices, interest rates and income has improved to the point where buyers are more serious about making offers.”

As with the condo market, the situation, while hardly robust, appears anything but tragic. Why isn’t the increased affordability of housing ever reported as a good thing?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 2:50 pm and is filed under General, MSM, business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.