Home sales continue to slip
The National Association of Realtors on Jan. 24 released the news that anyone trying to sell a home already knows: Housing sales were down in 2007.
The association released a year-end report showing that the owners sold more than 5.6 million existing homes in 2007. That’s the fifth-most homes ever sold in one year. However, it’s also a big drop from 2006. In that year, sellers sold more than 6.4 million existing homes.
The association also reported that the median sales price of existing homes was $218,900. That’s not good news for sellers, either: It represents a drop of 1.4 percent from the median price of $221,900 in 2006.
Most people would read this news as negative. I’m not so sure. Let’s look at pricing, for example. The median price of slightly over $218,000 is still high. During the real estate boom, housing prices in many areas of the country rose so high that many buyers could never hope to afford any home that was in decent shape or didn’t sit in a terrible location. Prices had risen too high, too quickly.
Hopefully, we are now returning to a real estate market that is a stable one, one where homes continue to appreciate but at a slower, more realistic pace. If prices would have continued to increase as quickly as they had during the first part of this decade, far too many residents would have been priced out of ownership.
