Housing Statistics

Tuesday, January 27, 2009 - By Gate Arty

The National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales jumped 6.5% to 4.74 million units in December versus November's 4.45 million units.   These numbers are still 3.5% below the 4.91 million units in December 2007.   For all of 2008 there were 4,912,000 million existing home sales compared to 5,652,000 sales in 2007. This represents a decline of 13.1%.  

Housing inventory dropped 11.7 percent to 3.68 million existing homes, representing a 9.3 month supply, which is down from an 11.2 month supply in November.   The national median home price in December was 175,400, which is 15.3% lower than December 2007's $207,000.

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said home prices continue to drop. "It appears some buyers are taking advantage of much lower home prices," he said. "The higher monthly sales gain and falling inventory are steps in the right direction, but the market is still far from normal balanced conditions. Buyers will continue to have an edge over sellers for the foreseeable future."

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