December 27, 2011 (Chris Moore)

Weekly existing home sales volume increased last week, for the first time in six weeks, while home prices remained flat according to the National Home Sales Snapshot released by DataQuick.

There were 157,521 properties sold over the previous thirty day rolling period ending December 22nd, up 1.4 percent from the previous week’s total of 155,305 properties sold. Sales are down 4.7 percent in the last month.

Last week’s home sales volume was still 4.0 percent higher than the 151,468 homes sold during same period a year ago and was only 0.4 percent lower than the same period three years ago when 158,113 homes were sold.

The median price of a home sold over the previous thirty day rolling period also ending December 22nd declined 0.1 percent to $179,900 from $180,000 the previous week. It was the first decline in home prices after two consecutive weeks of increases but still left prices 2.7 percent higher than they were a month ago.

Home prices were 5.3 percent lower than the same period a year ago when the median price of a home was $190,000 and were down 13.1 percent from the same period three years ago when the median price was $207,100.

Over the last five years, median home prices nationwide have ranged from a high of $275,000 to a low of $170,000.

Sales volume for a thirty day period within the last five years has ranged from a high of 339,669 properties sold to a low of 119,636.

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