Home prices sales fall again

Single-family home prices and sales fell again last month in the Pikes Peak region, extending the downturn in the resale market.

The median price of homes that sold in May fell 4.5 percent to $210,000 when compared with the same month a year ago, according to a report Monday from the Pikes Peak Association of Realtors.

It was the 10th straight month median prices declined when compared with a year earlier; the median is the midpoint of sale prices in any given month.

Prices reported by the Realtors Association represent homes whose transactions were handled by its members and don't include homes sold by owners. Most of the homes were sold in El Paso and Teller counties.

Meanwhile, home sales totaled 840 in May, an 18.6 percent drop from the same month last year. It was the worst May for home sales since 795 were sold in May 1999.

The supply of homes for sale in May dipped 2.6 percent to 6,396 when compared with a year ago.

That decrease is something to take heart in, said Jay Gupta, managing broker of Gloriod & Associates in Colorado Springs and president of the Realtors Association board.

The number of new listings in May fell 19.9 percent when compared with last year at the same time; through the first five months of 2008, the number of additional homes listed fell 11.4 percent compared with the same period in 2007.

Fewer homes coming onto the market continues a pattern over the past few months and will help stabilize the area's supply, which is healthy for the market, Gupta said.

And while year-overyear prices declined in May, prices showed a 1.1 percent gain from April to May and were up even more when comparing February to March and March to April, Gupta said.

Homes in good condition and realistically priced for today's market will sell relatively quickly; nearly seven out of every 10 homes that sold in May were on the market for 90 days or less, and more than one-third of those sold in a month or less, he said.

May's median price of $210,000 also was up from the same month earlier in the decade - noteworthy because those years reflected a more realistic pace of home sales and not the record-setting sales of 2005, Gupta said.

"We are seeing an incremental, in a sense, confidence in the market," Gupta said.

Some neighborhoods are doing better than others, and homes in some price ranges are selling better than others, said Kevin Patterson, president of The Patterson Group, a Springs residential brokerage. The high-end market - $700,000 and up - is flooded with a two- to three-year backlog of homes for sale, he said.

"It's a wonderful time to be a buyer and it's a tougher environment to be a seller," Patterson said. "Our job right now is to create realistic expectations for sellers."

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0228 or rich.laden@gazette.com


PENDING HOME SALES

Pending home sales unexpectedly increased in April to the highest reading since October, an industry group said Monday, but they remain more than 13 percent below a year ago.

The National Association of Realtors' seasonally adjusted index of pending sales for existing homes rose to 88.2 from a March reading of 83.0, the lowest since the index was started in 2001. The index stood at 101.5 in April 2007.

NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun noted that pending sales contracts have ticked up in areas with the largest price declines, such as Detroit and Las Vegas. "Bargain hunters have entered the market en masse," he said.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS