Stability and Seasonality: DC Home Sales in June at Highest Level in Six Years

• July 11, 2011

by Mark Wellborn

Last month, 5,124 home purchase contracts were signed in the DC area, the highest total for the month of June since 2005, according to data released today by RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI), the research arm of Metropolitan Regional Information Systems (MRIS).

Feel like you have heard this before? You have. The year-over-year report for May reported that it, too, had the highest number of signed contracts in six years.

The report released this morning also stated that the median home sales price for the area increased for the fourth month in a row, reaching $379,990, 7.5 percent higher than prices in May. One interesting takeaway from this statistic is that median prices are at their highest level since July 2008.

Courtesy of MRIS

Optimistic as these numbers are, RBI analyst Jonathan Miller told UrbanTurf that they are really just representative of seasonal home sales patterns and a return to a more stable market for the region. Also, he was careful to point out that the annual pending sales increase should be put into perspective:

“The 29.5% year‐over‐year June increase in pending sales activity was due to the comparison with last year’s post‐tax credit drop in activity, not a current surge in demand,” Miller wrote in the monthly report. “The numbers that we are seeing right now are more in line with normal seasonal patterns.”

Miller told UrbanTurf that the best indicator to watch is not the year-over-year statistics, but the month to month numbers. Robust as they are, pending sales dropped between May and June, and Miller noted that they will likely drop in the next couple months as the home sales market slows for the summer.

The area that MRIS analyzes includes DC, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, Alexandria City, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Fairfax City, and Falls Church City.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/stability_and_seasonality_dc_home_sales_in_june_at_highest_level_in_six_yea/3783