Down-Market for Philadelphia Home Sales

September 2nd, 2008

philadelphia home sales

Although there have been an increase in home sales in the western region of US, but the Philadelphia area has been reported with a down market in real estate home sales. There has been a decline of 22.6 percent in July in the eight counties of Philadelphia in comparison to the figure last year during the same period. It has been reported that the average home price have declined from $240,000 to $234,000. The ongoing foreclosure has proved heavily bad for Philadelphia area real estate. The month-to-month home sales were 9 percent down in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, which nationally showed an increase of 3.1 percent in July from the figure of June.

The median home prices of the real estate nationally fell by 7.1 percent from July last year to $212,400 from $228,600. According to economist Brian Bethune,

“While the bounce in July existing sales is a welcome improvement, the housing market still suffers from high inventories,”

It has been found that nearly 21,000 houses in the 6 counties of Southern California were sold in July. About 9,156 houses or 43.6 percent of these houses sold were a property facing foreclosure. There have been over 64 percent transactions in the foreclosure sales in the Orange County, one of those 6 counties. The median sale price for the 6 counties of Southern California declined to 31.1 percent year-over-year in the month of July.

Like California and Arizona, Pennsylvania did not face the absurd home-value inflation. It has been fortunate enough to escape it. As put forward by economist Rick Sharga, Pennsylvania,

“which saw home prices increase at somewhat more reasonable levels, didn’t have as high an incidence of consumers buying too much house with risky loans,”

Only those places have faced such a heavy home-value inflation that is tied up in the ongoing foreclosure cycle. The rate of foreclosure in Philadelphia for June stands at 1.1 percent. According to economist Joel L. Naroff, “This has been the story of the region for the last two decades,”

The most problematic areas in the real estate market currently are those that were overvalued during the housing market boom of 2006. The buyers here are suffering from risky loans. The median home price of July, which is $234,000, is lower by $1,000 than the figure of July, 2006. Naroff has said,

“more and more, it appears that the existing-home market [nationally] has bottomed, even if the large number of homes on the market means prices may continue to fall,”