Local home sales up, prices down in 2011

Home sales increased slightly in 2011 in the Colorado Springs area, but prices lagged, according to year-end statistics compiled by the Pikes Peak Association of Realtors.

For the year, single-family home sales totaled 8,460, up 3.4 percent over 2010, the association’s figures show. Those sales reflect deals handled by association members, but not sales in which homes were sold by their owners. About 95 percent of the sales took place in the Springs and El Paso and Teller counties.

In December, 651 home sales were recorded by the association, a 3.5 percent increase over the same month the previous year. It was the sixth straight year-over-year increase in monthly sales; sales in the second half of the year, though, are in comparison with the second half of 2010, during which sales fell off after the conclusion of the federal government’s tax credit program for homebuyers.

The median price — or midpoint — of all sales in 2011 was $187,000, down 4.1 percent from 2010. It was the lowest annual median price since $182,450 in 2003, the association’s figures show.

The median price for December’s home sales was $185,000, down 6.8 percent from the same month in 2010.

But a combination of factors should make 2012 a better year for the single-family market, said Hank Poburka, a real estate agent with The Platinum Group Realtors in Colorado Springs; he takes over as Realtors Association board chairman later this year.

Mortgage rates remain at historically low levels, and some apartment rents have risen to the point where they’re about as high as monthly mortgage payments, Poburka said. As a result, many potential buyers — including younger people — are starting to purchase homes again, he said.

“I’m seeing a lot of those people coming out right now; they’re coming out and saying, ‘I didn’t know I could buy a house for the same amount I’m paying for rent’,” Poburka said.

And while prices have fallen in recent years, an expected increase in homebuying, combined with a sharp reduction in the inventory of homes on the market, should help boost prices in 2012, he said.

In December, 3,285 homes were listed for sale in the Pikes Peak region, 24 percent less than a year earlier.

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Contact Rich Laden: 636-0228 Twitter @richladen

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