DC Area Home Sales Reach Highest Level for August in a Decade

• September 10, 2015

by UrbanTurf Staff

A Bloomingdale home that sold in August.

The local housing market didn’t slow down like the rest of the city at the end of the summer.

Pending home sales in the region were at their highest level for the month of August since 2005, according to a report released this morning by RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI). New contracts rose about 11 percent compared to August 2014, and closed sales rose almost 8 percent. For the sixth month in a row, pending and closed sales increased on a year-over-year basis.

Increase in closed and pending sales. Click to enlarge.

Median home prices for the region in August fell about 1 percent compared to last year, an uncommon drop considering the heater that home prices have been on over the last 12 months. However, prices did rise in certain jurisdictions, including DC proper where they increased 9.5 percent year-over-year, from $475,000 to $520,000.

Median sales price by jurisdiction.

As for the supply of homes on the market, inventory increased for the 23rd consecutive month in August, but the clip at which supply is rising is slowing down. Inventory jumped 10.3 percent in August, but that is down significantly from the pace back in August 2014 when inventory rose 35 percent compared to the previous summer.

“I think the most interesting thing in the report has to do with housing supply,” Elliott Eisenberg, who prepared the August RBI report, told UrbanTurf. “Yes, it increased 10 percent, but that is a fraction of the increase from a year ago, and almost every month since then inventory growth has declined. If the pattern persists, inventory growth may turn negative in February or March. The rise in inventory has kept a lid on prices, but a move in the other direction would likely put upward pressure on prices.”

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/august_homes_sales_in_dc_area_reach_highest_level_in_a_decade/10316