May 7, 2012 (Chris Moore)

Home sales continued to gain momentum during the last month, reaching the same levels last seen at the end of September, while the upward climb in home prices paused for the first time in almost two months according to the weekly National Home Sales Snapshot released by DataQuick.

There were 178,695 properties sold over the previous thirty day rolling period ending May 3rd, up 2.5 percent from the previous week’s total of 174,304 properties sold and 13.5 percent higher than the 157,452 properties sold four weeks ago.

Sales volume is still down 6.4 percent from the current year’s cycle peak of 190,934 sales which occurred during the 30-day rolling period prior to September 1st.

Last week’s home sales volume was 2.5 percent higher than the 174,310 homes sold during the same period a year ago and was 7.9 percent higher than during the same period three years ago when 165,638 homes were sold.

The median price of a home sold over the current thirty day rolling period remained unchanged from the previous week at $179,900 and was 3.4 percent higher than they it was four weeks ago. It was the first time in eight weeks that home prices haven’t increased from the previous week.

Home prices were also 3.4 percent higher than the same period a year ago when the median price of a home was $174,000 and were 0.8 percent higher than they were three years ago when the median price was $178,500. It was the second consecutive week that year-over-year home prices surpassed the previous year’s levels.

Over the last five years, median home prices nationwide have ranged from a high of $275,000 to a low of $168,500.

Home sales volume over the last five years has ranged from a high of 339,669 properties sold to a low of 124,051.

The National Home Sales Snapshot includes 98 out of the top 100 metropolitan statistical areas covering 66.25 percent of U.S. home sales.

Tags: DataQuick, home sales, median home price, sales volume

Source:
DataQuick