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Moderate increase in housing market spurs sales

By Joyce Koballa jkoballa@heraldstandard.Com 3 min read
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Moderate price increases in the housing market could help spur sales as more properties become available, real estate analysts are finding.

Real estate data provider CoreLogic said greater affordability has helped housing recover over the spring and summer after sales and construction fell earlier this year.

Tom Simon, real estate broker and owner of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services in Belle Vernon, said he can see the trend starting to take off locally.

“We got a lot of appointments,” said Simon.

Sales of existing homes across the country rose for a fourth straight month in July to their strongest pace in nine months. And a measure of signed contracts also increased in July, suggesting that final sales will rise further in coming months.

According to CoreLogic, home prices rose 7.4 percent over last July. Also, the number of available homes rose 3.5 percent.

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 4.1 percent at the beginning of the month CoreLogic reported, the lowest in a year.

Data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) shows the median price for an existing single-family home went from $171,100 to $188,900 from January 2013 to January 2014 – a 10.4 percent increase in just one year.

Over the same period of time, mortgage rates jumped from 3.47 percent to 4.54 percent.

While home prices tend to be on the rise, real estate experts are seeing the increase happening at a more steady pace compared with historical trends.

For the most part, experts agreed that the housing recovery has pushed up home prices nearly everywhere.

In the past year, home prices rose in 225 of the 276 cities tracked by Clear Capital, a provider of real estate data and analysis.

Prices nationwide increased by 10.9 percent, pushing the median price for existing homes up by $30,000, to $215,000.

In Pennsylvania, the housing market is taking on the concept of supply and demand, according to a residential real estate report from a Pittsburgh agency.

West Penn Multi-List, Inc. provides multiple listing services and state of the art programs to broker subscribers and their agents.

The report represents the 13-county area serviced by the West Penn Multi-List, Inc., which includes Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Washington, Westmoreland, Fayette, Greene, Clarion, Lawrence, Mercer, Somerset and Indiana.

Simon, who subscribes to the service, said he is starting to see more home appreciation as the housing market gradually recovers.

“We’re probably at the very early stages,” said Simon. “This is a very welcoming phenomenon.”

The Pennsylvania Association of Realtors (PAR) also indicated that home prices have continued to rise, with the median sales price growing two percent in the fourth quarter and ending the year up three percent at $169,900.

“Statewide we’ve seen a continued upward trend in the housing market in the last year. While local markets vary based on a number of issues, overall we believe the market conditions are progressing favorably,” said Kim Skumanick, PAR president.

Skumanick said PAR expects to see such trends continue into 2014 and is optimistic that it will continue to see a robust housing market throughout the Commonwealth.

Realtor.com publishes a housing market report with data for 147 major metropolitan areas across the U.S.

The agency also tracks listing volume in each metro area, as measured by the number of homes listed for sale on its website.

Realtor.com’s most recent data from July showed a positive, healthy momentum with listings up year-over-year and month-over-month.

The agency also reported that increased inventory is supporting more healthy sales and is in line with increasing demand as improvement was detected in the median age of inventory and median prices year-over-year.

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