October 29, 2012 (Chris Moore)

Sales of existing homes continued their downward trend, falling by 2,614 sales from the previous week according to the weekly National Home Sales Snapshot released by DataQuick while home prices posted their first decline in six weeks.

There were 211,024 properties sold over the previous thirty-day rolling period ending October 25th, down 1.2 percent from the previous week’s total of 213,638 sold properties and 2.7 percent lower than the 216,896 properties sold four weeks ago.

Sales volume was 4.8 percent lower than the current year’s cycle peak of 221,695 sales which occurred during the 30-day rolling period prior to September 13th and were back at the levels seen at the beginning of July.

Last week’s home sales volume was 14.6 percent higher than the 184,189 homes sold during the same period a year ago and was 1.1 percent lower than during the same period three years ago when 213,395 homes were sold.

The median price of a home sold over the current thirty-day rolling period slipped a modest $100 from the previous week to $199,900. It was the first decline in home prices in six weeks, but it was the 11th time in the last 12 weeks that home prices remained near the $200,000 level.

Home prices were 8.6 percent higher than the same period a year ago when the median price of a home was $184,000 and were 5.3 percent higher than what they were three years ago when the median price was $189,900. It was the 28th 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