Taos Real Estate: taos news

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Home sales up, but still slow
Journal Staff Report

Sales of existing, single-family homes in the Albuquerque metro area remain sluggish heading into the prime buying and selling season.

Though closed sales in March increased 36.5 percent over February, with 465 homes sold, sales that low for March have not been seen since 1997, according to statistics from the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors.

Don Padilla, GAAR chairman, says he has noted a steady decline in closings since 2005, but it was "in the fourth quarter of 2008 that we had the financial meltdown at its highest.

"It's a non-activity situation, and this is nationwide. People just weren't buying homes."

Pending sales could boost those numbers somewhat come the end of April but only to what was considered normal before the boom years. There were 748 pending sales in March, an increase of 41.1 percent over February, GAAR statistics show. That was a typical number of pending sales in 2002.

"We're going to gradually start to rebound," Padilla said. "The beginning of the bottom was January. I think it's going to be a very flat bottom and be flat through July or August. It's not like a v-shaped bottom where we hit and then start going up."

Still, sellers are getting decent prices for their property once a buyer is found. The median sales price in March was $184,500, about the same as in February. That is down about 3.5 percent from the same time last year, but perhaps more telling is that the median remains above what it was three years ago — $181,000 — when buyers snapped up homes at asking price within days of their going on the market.

Padilla says prices have held mainly because the Albuquerque area has not seen the large numbers of foreclosures that have afflicted other metro areas.

Sellers are having to wait an average of 86 days for a home to sell. That's about 10 fewer days than in February, and if the season is a predictor, that time should fall off more in coming months.

For more information from the GAAR monthly sales report, see www.gaar.com.