Good News! Home Sales in the South (Including DC) Increase

• January 27th 2009

by Mark Wellborn

The National Association of Realtors has, believe it or not, come out with some good news regarding home sales nationwide.

Yesterday, the Association issued a release that said home sales in the country advanced 6.5 percent from November to December last year. The news for the DC Metro area was even better. Home sales in the Southern region of the country, which includes DC, Maryland and Virginia, advanced 7.4 percent. Only the West region, where sales jumped at a rate of 13.6 percent, showed a larger percentage increase.

The region that the DC Metro area falls in also shaped up well against the rest of the country in terms of the average price of a home. Nationwide, the average price of a property dropped 15.3 percent when compared with prices in December 2007. In the Southern region, prices declined just 8 percent.

However, it still may be awhile until you want to put your home on the market. Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for NAR, said home prices continue to fall significantly.

“It appears some buyers are taking advantage of much lower home prices,” he said. “The higher monthly sales gain (is a) step 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.”

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/good_news_home_sales_in_the_south_including_dc_increase/480.