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Sales of Existing Homes Reach Two-Year High Thanks to First-time Homebuyer Credit

  • October 23rd 2009

by Mark Wellborn

Sales of Existing Homes Reach Two-Year High Thanks to First-time Homebuyer Credit: Figure 1

The National Association of Realtors has announced that sales of existing homes reached a two-year high in September. Sales jumped 9.4 percent last month after falling in August, and were up 9.2% since September 2008.

As expected, the first-time homebuyer credit is largely responsible for this surge. From the NAR press release:

“Much of the momentum is from people responding to the first-time buyer tax credit, which is freeing many sellers to make a trade and buy another home” NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said.

Unfortunately, with this good news there is also bad. Yun noted that the housing market is underperforming as home values continue their decline. In September, the median price for homes sold was $174,900, an 8.5 percent drop from a year earlier. And distressed properties accounted for 29 percent of sales in September, according to the NAR.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/sales_of_existing_homes_reach_two-year_high_thanks_to_first-time_homebuyer_/1443.

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