Homeowners worried about the sliding value of their home have at least one thing to be grateful for — the condominium market might be even worse.
“The condo market is hurting from same factors hurting the general home market,” said Jody Landers, executive vice president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors. “Financing isn’t easy, and people are deciding this isn’t the time to buy.”
Both new condo sales and condo resales in the Baltimore metro area are well behind last year’s pace, according to midyear data released last week by Delta Associates, a Washington, D.C.-based real estate research firm. Since last spring, condo values have also dropped slightly more than local home values, according to the data.
Just 59 new condos were sold in Baltimore City and Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Harford and Howard counties during the second quarter, down from 303 in the same quarter last year.
In the first quarter, a net of just 13 condos were sold in the metro area, and Baltimore City reported new condo sales of -119, which Delta attributed to cancellations of contracts already signed.
For the year ending June 30, 109 new condos were sold, down 90 percent from 1,101 in the 12 months ending June 30, 2007, according to Delta’s figures.
Condo resales are on pace for a 50 percent decline this year, according to the data. Through May 31, 919 condo resales were reported in the metro region, an average of 184 per month. But last year, 3,237 resales were reported, an average of 270 per month.
Median resale prices in the Baltimore area fell 4.7 percent in May to $225,214 from $236,223 during the same month a year ago.
“They’re not immune to the rest of the market,” said David Martz, a Realtor with Long and Foster Fells Point specializing in condos. “To me, except for the [condo] fee, there’s no difference between a condo resale and a regular town home resale.”
By comparison, metro-area home prices fell 1.14 percent in May and sales volume was down 30.4 percent from the same month a year before, according to data gathered by Realtor-owned Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. MRIS data include condo sales as well as single-family sales.
But Delta’s numbers, especially the number of contracts broken, are reported by the condo developers themselves and so could be suspect, said Ross Mackesey, sales manager with Coldwell Bank Federal Hill who has represented about 50 condo projects.
He said the numbers could also be unintentionally skewed by new, large developments such as those in Harbor East throwing many units on the market at once.
“The Baltimore condo market is finite enough that we can actually look at Delta’s numbers and pin down events that skewed them,” Mackesey said. “But that doesn’t mean year-over-year [numbers] ... don’t have some validity.” (by Aaron Cahall, The Examiner)
Showing posts with label real estate market. Show all posts
Showing posts with label real estate market. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Baltimore Metro Area numbers for May 2008
Number of homes on the market in the Baltimore metro area for under $250,000 in May 2006: 3,600.
In May 2007: 5,400.
In May 2008: almost 7,400.
Baltimore metro area home sales fell 30 percent in May compared with a year ago, continuing the trend. Average prices were up modestly -- 1 percent, to about $316,000 -- but median prices were down about the same amount. (The median is the midpoint, which means half the homes are more expensive and half are less.)
Seems like the housing market has been playing the same song since last September.
Interested in seeing the figures or checking out county-by-county performance? Go to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems' stats page. (http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/realestate/blog/)
In May 2007: 5,400.
In May 2008: almost 7,400.
Baltimore metro area home sales fell 30 percent in May compared with a year ago, continuing the trend. Average prices were up modestly -- 1 percent, to about $316,000 -- but median prices were down about the same amount. (The median is the midpoint, which means half the homes are more expensive and half are less.)
Seems like the housing market has been playing the same song since last September.
Interested in seeing the figures or checking out county-by-county performance? Go to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems' stats page. (http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/realestate/blog/)
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Area home sales plunge 30% from September 2006
Baltimore-area housing sales fell last month to the lowest level for a September in at least nine years, as the turmoil in the mortgage industry hit the slumping market full force.
The number of homes sold - 1,975 - dropped nearly 30 percent from a year earlier, already well into the downturn, Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. reported yesterday. It is the lowest sales figure for September since MRIS began tracking the area in 1998.
By comparison, buyers snapped up more than 4,000 homes in September 2005, the last hurrah of the housing boom.
Average home prices still eked out a gain last month, according to MRIS, which runs the local multiple-listing service. Prices in the metro area rose just under 2 percent, to about $315,000, with most jurisdictions seeing slight gains.
It took homes an average of 95 days to sell, a month longer than a year earlier. And the inventory of unsold homes, nearly 21,000, set a record.
Lender bankruptcies, a credit crunch and a jump in interest rates for jumbo mortgages in August continue to depress sales nationwide. Yesterday, the National Association of Realtors lowered its forecast of 2007 U.S. existing-home sales for the eighth month in a row. It now expects that the number of homes changing hands will be off about 11 percent from last year.
"I think the buyers are scared - they're afraid that if they buy today, that tomorrow [the price] is going to drop 15 percent," said George Brookhart, an agent with Long & Foster in Ellicott City.
Moody's Economy.com predicts that the local and national markets will not hit bottom until late next year, and its forecasts show values falling about 15 percent in the Baltimore area over those months. There are signs of backtracking now: Average prices dropped about 4 percent in Harford and Howard counties last month, the MRIS data showed.
Prices rose about 4 percent in Baltimore County, 3.6 percent in Anne Arundel, 2 percent in Carroll and half a percent in the city.
Economy.com says prices in the region would be down overall if they included the value of incentives that sellers now routinely give to buyers, such as thousands of dollars in closing-cost help.
High-priced Howard County was hardest hit last month, with the number of sales dropping by 34 percent. The average home there sold for about $418,000 - the point at which buyers would need a jumbo loan if they were financing the entire purchase. Harford, with an average price of $285,000, saw the smallest decline, but sales were down 22 percent.
Jada Krall, who is trying to sell a two-year-old colonial in Harford for $444,400, said she sees homes for sale everywhere she goes in the county. She counts 15 in her subdivision alone. To make hers stand out, she's offering a $7,500 incentive to be used toward closing costs or upgrade work.
"We've seen a few houses in the neighborhood sell," said Krall, whose family is relocating to Tampa, Fla. "We're just hoping ours is going to be next."
She can expect good deals in Florida, at least. Economy.com expects price declines of 20 percent to 30 percent in some of the once-hot housing markets there.
Celia Chen, director of housing economics at Economy.com, said recent tightening of credit is holding back demand nationally even as foreclosures increase supply. Borrowers with good credit can still get traditional mortgages, she said, but 40 percent of the loans issued last year were "subprime" and "nonprime" - from jumbo to interest-only.
"The lack of that kind of funding is going to have a big negative impact on housing this year," Chen said.
To avoid the higher rates of jumbo loans, city residents Bonita and Radames Rodriguez are opting for a regular mortgage plus an equity line of credit to purchase a $615,000 new home in Canton.
"I don't like the idea of having two separate loans, but it's better, much better, than the alternative," said Bonita Rodriguez.
The couple, who work in sales, will settle on that house this month and also complete the sale of the Bolton Hill rowhouse they've owned for eight years. They're selling it for $575,000, $74,000 less than the original asking price in April.
But they're buying their new home for $135,000 less than the builder's original price.
Bonita Rodriguez believes it was priced way too high to begin with. "I think we got a good deal, but I don't think we got a real bargain," she said.
Real estate agents say the days of setting prices based on past sales are over. Now, said Ron Howard with ReMax Sails in Baltimore, it's about the competition - other homes on the market.
After one of his Canton rehabs sat on the market for six months, Mel Stachura of Urban Rehab Consultants LLC decided to deal with the competition by adding a bathroom and more closet space.
"You have to adapt to survive," said Stachura, who was reacting to feedback from prospective buyers who looked and left. More than 60 came through. "There's buyers out there - they're just picky."
They're much more demanding from start to finish than they used to be, said Tressa Manna, his agent.
"Buyers are asking for everything on the home inspection, to the point of, 'I want the burnt-out bulb in the hallway replaced,'" said Manna, with ReMax Sails.(By Jamie Smith Hopkins, Baltimore Sun )
The number of homes sold - 1,975 - dropped nearly 30 percent from a year earlier, already well into the downturn, Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. reported yesterday. It is the lowest sales figure for September since MRIS began tracking the area in 1998.
By comparison, buyers snapped up more than 4,000 homes in September 2005, the last hurrah of the housing boom.
Average home prices still eked out a gain last month, according to MRIS, which runs the local multiple-listing service. Prices in the metro area rose just under 2 percent, to about $315,000, with most jurisdictions seeing slight gains.
It took homes an average of 95 days to sell, a month longer than a year earlier. And the inventory of unsold homes, nearly 21,000, set a record.
Lender bankruptcies, a credit crunch and a jump in interest rates for jumbo mortgages in August continue to depress sales nationwide. Yesterday, the National Association of Realtors lowered its forecast of 2007 U.S. existing-home sales for the eighth month in a row. It now expects that the number of homes changing hands will be off about 11 percent from last year.
"I think the buyers are scared - they're afraid that if they buy today, that tomorrow [the price] is going to drop 15 percent," said George Brookhart, an agent with Long & Foster in Ellicott City.
Moody's Economy.com predicts that the local and national markets will not hit bottom until late next year, and its forecasts show values falling about 15 percent in the Baltimore area over those months. There are signs of backtracking now: Average prices dropped about 4 percent in Harford and Howard counties last month, the MRIS data showed.
Prices rose about 4 percent in Baltimore County, 3.6 percent in Anne Arundel, 2 percent in Carroll and half a percent in the city.
Economy.com says prices in the region would be down overall if they included the value of incentives that sellers now routinely give to buyers, such as thousands of dollars in closing-cost help.
High-priced Howard County was hardest hit last month, with the number of sales dropping by 34 percent. The average home there sold for about $418,000 - the point at which buyers would need a jumbo loan if they were financing the entire purchase. Harford, with an average price of $285,000, saw the smallest decline, but sales were down 22 percent.
Jada Krall, who is trying to sell a two-year-old colonial in Harford for $444,400, said she sees homes for sale everywhere she goes in the county. She counts 15 in her subdivision alone. To make hers stand out, she's offering a $7,500 incentive to be used toward closing costs or upgrade work.
"We've seen a few houses in the neighborhood sell," said Krall, whose family is relocating to Tampa, Fla. "We're just hoping ours is going to be next."
She can expect good deals in Florida, at least. Economy.com expects price declines of 20 percent to 30 percent in some of the once-hot housing markets there.
Celia Chen, director of housing economics at Economy.com, said recent tightening of credit is holding back demand nationally even as foreclosures increase supply. Borrowers with good credit can still get traditional mortgages, she said, but 40 percent of the loans issued last year were "subprime" and "nonprime" - from jumbo to interest-only.
"The lack of that kind of funding is going to have a big negative impact on housing this year," Chen said.
To avoid the higher rates of jumbo loans, city residents Bonita and Radames Rodriguez are opting for a regular mortgage plus an equity line of credit to purchase a $615,000 new home in Canton.
"I don't like the idea of having two separate loans, but it's better, much better, than the alternative," said Bonita Rodriguez.
The couple, who work in sales, will settle on that house this month and also complete the sale of the Bolton Hill rowhouse they've owned for eight years. They're selling it for $575,000, $74,000 less than the original asking price in April.
But they're buying their new home for $135,000 less than the builder's original price.
Bonita Rodriguez believes it was priced way too high to begin with. "I think we got a good deal, but I don't think we got a real bargain," she said.
Real estate agents say the days of setting prices based on past sales are over. Now, said Ron Howard with ReMax Sails in Baltimore, it's about the competition - other homes on the market.
After one of his Canton rehabs sat on the market for six months, Mel Stachura of Urban Rehab Consultants LLC decided to deal with the competition by adding a bathroom and more closet space.
"You have to adapt to survive," said Stachura, who was reacting to feedback from prospective buyers who looked and left. More than 60 came through. "There's buyers out there - they're just picky."
They're much more demanding from start to finish than they used to be, said Tressa Manna, his agent.
"Buyers are asking for everything on the home inspection, to the point of, 'I want the burnt-out bulb in the hallway replaced,'" said Manna, with ReMax Sails.(By Jamie Smith Hopkins, Baltimore Sun )
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Home sales slump in Md.
21.1% fewer sold in spring; prices in area hold up
Maryland's housing market took a beating in the spring selling season, recording one of the biggest drops in sales in the nation.
Homeowners in the state sold 21.1 percent fewer homes during the second quarter than they did a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors said yesterday. That was nearly double the 10.8 percent drop for the nation as a whole. The numbers, which track existing homes, are annualized and adjusted for seasonal variations.
Despite the steep sales decline, pricing in the Baltimore metropolitan area held up. The median price of a single-family home gained 3 percent in the April-June quarter over the same three months a year earlier, according to the association. Nationally, prices fell 1.5 percent.
The slump in sales in the April-June period preceded the current turmoil in the mortgage industry, which was ignited by failures in subprime loans made to buyers with shakier credit. Now, as foreclosures mount and more lenders go out of business, it has become harder to qualify for a mortgage, narrowing the pool of potential buyers.
That's a sharp contrast to what happened during the housing boom, when relaxed lending standards and the proliferation of adjustable-rate, interest-only and other nontraditional loans led to rising sales and prices.
"All of us were on a nice bubble, and everybody was waiting for that bubble to fizzle," said Thomas C. Shaner, executive director of the Maryland Association of Mortgage Brokers. "Well, it popped."
Lawrence Yun, senior economist with the National Association of Realtors, thinks prices in the Baltimore area are holding up because the economy continues to create high-paying jobs.
"There's not a panic in the market," agreed John McClain, senior fellow at the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. "There are still people out there who need to live here because we still have job growth."
But sales might be better if prices were dropping.
Maryland home prices doubled from 2000 to 2005, an unusually big gain even for the U.S. boom years. Incomes didn't rise nearly as fast. With half the homes now selling for more than $325,000, some would-be buyers just can't make the numbers work.
"Affordability has been eroded," said Celia Chen, director of housing economics for Moody's Economy.com. "If prices are not falling off, that's going to constrain sales."
She thinks the local housing market probably won't improve until the middle of next year, and that's assuming no more nasty surprises.
"Conditions can easily become much worse than we expect because of all the issues arising right now in the mortgage markets and financial markets," Chen said.
Only Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Tennessee saw bigger decreases in second-quarter sales than Maryland. Florida - a state that, like Maryland, recorded some of the biggest price increases in the country during the housing boom - had a 41 percent slump in sales.
In all, 41 states plus the District of Columbia recorded declines.
Maryland's annualized sales pace in the second quarter was just under 93,000 home sales, compared with about 118,000 the same time last year, the National Association of Realtors said.
Existing homes aren't the only part of the market feeling the pinch. The National Association of Home Builders said yesterday that its index of builder confidence for August fell to its lowest level since the recessionary days of January 1991. Builders say the credit crunch is causing problems not only for borrowers with shaky credit but also for prospective buyers who need "jumbo" loans of more than $417,000.
It's hardly helpful for expensive markets such as Howard County. Nearly half the existing homes in Howard are selling for more than that price, let alone the big new homes.
"That's a scary thought," said Pat Hiban, an associate broker at the Pat Hiban Real Estate Group with Keller Williams Realty in Ellicott City. With interest rates on jumbo loans rising, some would-be buyers are reconsidering whether to purchase a home, he said.
Yun said mortgage troubles will hold back demand during the short term. But he said the subprime bust has propelled buyers with less-than-perfect credit back to loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, a segment of the financing market that was all but abandoned during the go-go days of the boom.
He expects small gains in prices in the Baltimore area in the near future.
Yun noted signs of nationwide improvement in prices during the second quarter with 97 metropolitan areas out of 149 showing year-over-year gains in price, up from 83 in the first quarter and 68 in the fourth quarter of last year.
But Chen thinks some of the second-quarter increases were artificially high. Median prices might have been skewed upward by a drop-off in sales of cheaper homes, she said, because the subprime market was in trouble before interest rates rose for jumbo loans.
"The lower end of the housing market is falling off quickly, more quickly, because of all the problems of the subprime lending market," Chen said.(baltimoresun.com)
Maryland's housing market took a beating in the spring selling season, recording one of the biggest drops in sales in the nation.
Homeowners in the state sold 21.1 percent fewer homes during the second quarter than they did a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors said yesterday. That was nearly double the 10.8 percent drop for the nation as a whole. The numbers, which track existing homes, are annualized and adjusted for seasonal variations.
Despite the steep sales decline, pricing in the Baltimore metropolitan area held up. The median price of a single-family home gained 3 percent in the April-June quarter over the same three months a year earlier, according to the association. Nationally, prices fell 1.5 percent.
The slump in sales in the April-June period preceded the current turmoil in the mortgage industry, which was ignited by failures in subprime loans made to buyers with shakier credit. Now, as foreclosures mount and more lenders go out of business, it has become harder to qualify for a mortgage, narrowing the pool of potential buyers.
That's a sharp contrast to what happened during the housing boom, when relaxed lending standards and the proliferation of adjustable-rate, interest-only and other nontraditional loans led to rising sales and prices.
"All of us were on a nice bubble, and everybody was waiting for that bubble to fizzle," said Thomas C. Shaner, executive director of the Maryland Association of Mortgage Brokers. "Well, it popped."
Lawrence Yun, senior economist with the National Association of Realtors, thinks prices in the Baltimore area are holding up because the economy continues to create high-paying jobs.
"There's not a panic in the market," agreed John McClain, senior fellow at the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. "There are still people out there who need to live here because we still have job growth."
But sales might be better if prices were dropping.
Maryland home prices doubled from 2000 to 2005, an unusually big gain even for the U.S. boom years. Incomes didn't rise nearly as fast. With half the homes now selling for more than $325,000, some would-be buyers just can't make the numbers work.
"Affordability has been eroded," said Celia Chen, director of housing economics for Moody's Economy.com. "If prices are not falling off, that's going to constrain sales."
She thinks the local housing market probably won't improve until the middle of next year, and that's assuming no more nasty surprises.
"Conditions can easily become much worse than we expect because of all the issues arising right now in the mortgage markets and financial markets," Chen said.
Only Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Tennessee saw bigger decreases in second-quarter sales than Maryland. Florida - a state that, like Maryland, recorded some of the biggest price increases in the country during the housing boom - had a 41 percent slump in sales.
In all, 41 states plus the District of Columbia recorded declines.
Maryland's annualized sales pace in the second quarter was just under 93,000 home sales, compared with about 118,000 the same time last year, the National Association of Realtors said.
Existing homes aren't the only part of the market feeling the pinch. The National Association of Home Builders said yesterday that its index of builder confidence for August fell to its lowest level since the recessionary days of January 1991. Builders say the credit crunch is causing problems not only for borrowers with shaky credit but also for prospective buyers who need "jumbo" loans of more than $417,000.
It's hardly helpful for expensive markets such as Howard County. Nearly half the existing homes in Howard are selling for more than that price, let alone the big new homes.
"That's a scary thought," said Pat Hiban, an associate broker at the Pat Hiban Real Estate Group with Keller Williams Realty in Ellicott City. With interest rates on jumbo loans rising, some would-be buyers are reconsidering whether to purchase a home, he said.
Yun said mortgage troubles will hold back demand during the short term. But he said the subprime bust has propelled buyers with less-than-perfect credit back to loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, a segment of the financing market that was all but abandoned during the go-go days of the boom.
He expects small gains in prices in the Baltimore area in the near future.
Yun noted signs of nationwide improvement in prices during the second quarter with 97 metropolitan areas out of 149 showing year-over-year gains in price, up from 83 in the first quarter and 68 in the fourth quarter of last year.
But Chen thinks some of the second-quarter increases were artificially high. Median prices might have been skewed upward by a drop-off in sales of cheaper homes, she said, because the subprime market was in trouble before interest rates rose for jumbo loans.
"The lower end of the housing market is falling off quickly, more quickly, because of all the problems of the subprime lending market," Chen said.(baltimoresun.com)
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Unsold homes swell to record in region
Stacey Wooden and her husband, David Schreiber, have had their Mount Washington home on the market for four months. The couple initially listed their home for $769,000 but eventually dropped the price by almost $70,000.
Home prices flattened in July in metropolitan Baltimore, as unsold houses swelled to a record and buyers faced tightening credit from a distressed mortgage industry.
The average price of a home in the region rose less than half a percent to $331,053 last month from $329,855 in July 2006, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., a Rockville multiple-listing service.
Average prices rose as much as 4.2 percent in Carroll County and 3.5 percent in Baltimore City, but were down slightly in Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Harford counties and flat in Howard County.
As the number of homes on the market mounted, buyers were being forced to cut prices to make a sale happen.
At the same time, buyers - some with good credit - are finding their home loan options more limited as lenders pull back in light of problems in the subprime market.
"The pool of buyers has been shrinking," said Gail Feirstein, an agent with Coldwell Banker in the Annapolis Plaza office. "The mortgage market has created more of a gap for buyers who want to buy a house. Programs with 100 percent financing are on hold right now, and first-time homebuyers have to stretch more. That makes the whole move up market more difficult."
Earlier this week, a report by the National Association of Realtors predicted that home sales nationally likely will fall 6.8 percent to 6.04 million this year, a five-year low.
"Mortgage disruptions will hold back sales over the short term, but long-term fundamentals are favorable," with a modest upturn expected by the end of the year, predicted Lawrence Yun, a senior economist with the Realtor's association, in the report.
Prices have been falling across the nation, said Celia Chen, director of housing economics for Moody's Economy.com.
"Baltimore prices are holding up a little better," she said. "There's certainly weakness all over the country. It's getting more difficult to get financing for homes, particularly for those buyers who don't have very good credit ratings. The subprime segment has obviously collapsed, and very few lenders are now originating loans for subprime borrowers."
Subprime loans are made at higher interest rates to borrowers with poor credit.
"The fact that fewer of those mortgages are being written is behind, in large part, the declining number of sales of homes," Chen said.
Though prices barely budged from a year earlier in metropolitan Baltimore, the number of home sales has been sliding by double digits each month since April.
The number of homes sold in Baltimore and the five surrounding counties fell 12.36 percent to 2,921 in July, compared with 3,333 homes in July 2006, said MRIS, the multiple-listing service.
With listings at a record 19,985, homes took an average of 80 days to sell, compared with an average of 55 days in July 2006 when inventory was 16,749, the statistics showed.
Some price ranges are faring better than others, real estate agents said. High-end suburban houses - $3 million and up - are selling well, sometimes even within a month, said Marc Witman, a partner at Yerman Witman Gaines & Garceau Realty.
But Baltimore's downtown housing market has an abundance of homes in the $300,000 to $500,000 price range.
"There is such a supply of housing in that price range, they all start to run together," Witman said. "Buyers are becoming more deliberate and are taking their time to select the properties they want to view because there are just so many, and you don't have time to go through them all."
To compete, sellers are having to rethink asking prices and stay on top of repairs and maintenance, real estate agents said.
"Some houses have been on the market for so long that people have lost interest in keeping them up," said Tina Marine, an agent with Coldwell Banker in Annapolis. "They're grungy. The beds get stopped being made. ... People just give up."
David Schreiber and Stacey Wooden are not giving up on selling their renovated, five-bedroom, century-old house in Mount Washington. The family plans to relocate to the Chapel Hill-Durham-Raleigh, N.C., triangle for his job, which has an office in Raleigh.
They have cut their initial price of $769,000, set in April, twice to its current $699,999. The couple had hoped to move over the summer to enroll their two sons in school in North Carolina by fall. But despite several open houses, they have had just one offer.
"We're trying to be pragmatic about things," Schreiber said. "There don't seem to be a lot of variables we have control over in the housing market." (baltimoresun.com)
Home prices flattened in July in metropolitan Baltimore, as unsold houses swelled to a record and buyers faced tightening credit from a distressed mortgage industry.
The average price of a home in the region rose less than half a percent to $331,053 last month from $329,855 in July 2006, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., a Rockville multiple-listing service.
Average prices rose as much as 4.2 percent in Carroll County and 3.5 percent in Baltimore City, but were down slightly in Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Harford counties and flat in Howard County.
As the number of homes on the market mounted, buyers were being forced to cut prices to make a sale happen.
At the same time, buyers - some with good credit - are finding their home loan options more limited as lenders pull back in light of problems in the subprime market.
"The pool of buyers has been shrinking," said Gail Feirstein, an agent with Coldwell Banker in the Annapolis Plaza office. "The mortgage market has created more of a gap for buyers who want to buy a house. Programs with 100 percent financing are on hold right now, and first-time homebuyers have to stretch more. That makes the whole move up market more difficult."
Earlier this week, a report by the National Association of Realtors predicted that home sales nationally likely will fall 6.8 percent to 6.04 million this year, a five-year low.
"Mortgage disruptions will hold back sales over the short term, but long-term fundamentals are favorable," with a modest upturn expected by the end of the year, predicted Lawrence Yun, a senior economist with the Realtor's association, in the report.
Prices have been falling across the nation, said Celia Chen, director of housing economics for Moody's Economy.com.
"Baltimore prices are holding up a little better," she said. "There's certainly weakness all over the country. It's getting more difficult to get financing for homes, particularly for those buyers who don't have very good credit ratings. The subprime segment has obviously collapsed, and very few lenders are now originating loans for subprime borrowers."
Subprime loans are made at higher interest rates to borrowers with poor credit.
"The fact that fewer of those mortgages are being written is behind, in large part, the declining number of sales of homes," Chen said.
Though prices barely budged from a year earlier in metropolitan Baltimore, the number of home sales has been sliding by double digits each month since April.
The number of homes sold in Baltimore and the five surrounding counties fell 12.36 percent to 2,921 in July, compared with 3,333 homes in July 2006, said MRIS, the multiple-listing service.
With listings at a record 19,985, homes took an average of 80 days to sell, compared with an average of 55 days in July 2006 when inventory was 16,749, the statistics showed.
Some price ranges are faring better than others, real estate agents said. High-end suburban houses - $3 million and up - are selling well, sometimes even within a month, said Marc Witman, a partner at Yerman Witman Gaines & Garceau Realty.
But Baltimore's downtown housing market has an abundance of homes in the $300,000 to $500,000 price range.
"There is such a supply of housing in that price range, they all start to run together," Witman said. "Buyers are becoming more deliberate and are taking their time to select the properties they want to view because there are just so many, and you don't have time to go through them all."
To compete, sellers are having to rethink asking prices and stay on top of repairs and maintenance, real estate agents said.
"Some houses have been on the market for so long that people have lost interest in keeping them up," said Tina Marine, an agent with Coldwell Banker in Annapolis. "They're grungy. The beds get stopped being made. ... People just give up."
David Schreiber and Stacey Wooden are not giving up on selling their renovated, five-bedroom, century-old house in Mount Washington. The family plans to relocate to the Chapel Hill-Durham-Raleigh, N.C., triangle for his job, which has an office in Raleigh.
They have cut their initial price of $769,000, set in April, twice to its current $699,999. The couple had hoped to move over the summer to enroll their two sons in school in North Carolina by fall. But despite several open houses, they have had just one offer.
"We're trying to be pragmatic about things," Schreiber said. "There don't seem to be a lot of variables we have control over in the housing market." (baltimoresun.com)
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