Home sales rise carries over to '98 Edgemere boasts hottest-selling single-family homes

Surge in fourth quarter

Howard County has highest average price in several categories

More new townhouses were sold in Anne Arundel County than in any other jurisdiction last year.

Owings Mills New Town in Baltimore County had another record year in home sales, boasting two of the top-selling communities in the metro area.

The hottest selling single-family community wasn't in Howard County but, rather, in the Edgemere area of eastern Baltimore County.

But if you wanted to pay the most for a new single-family home, you should have gone down the Interstate 70 corridor of Howard County, where sale prices averaged more than $350,000.

Those were some of the conclusions reached in the 1997 Year End Review of New Home Trends, released by Meyers Housing Data Reports, a Washington firm that tracks and analyzes new homes in the Baltimore metropolitan market.

According to Ken Sugarman, regional operations director, the Baltimore market was saved by a surge in sales in the final quarter of 1997, which has carried over into the first quarter of this year. Last year -- when predictions called for a 1 percent to 3 percent increase -- the Baltimore metro area fell 3.2 percent in total new-home sales when compared to 1996.

In Meyers' March report, Sugarman looks for 1998 sales in the lower mid-Atlantic region to jump "a healthy 6 to 8 percent over last year" by the end of June.

Yet, last year at this time builders were saddled with too many homes and too few buyers. Now, for many builders, the opposite is true.

"The increased sales activity has occurred across all product markets," said Jeb Bittner, president of the Baltimore division of Pulte Home Corp., which was the third largest builder in the area last year. "The significant difference that buyers are finding when they get out there now is a greatly reduced inventory of existing homes, and, as a result now, builders in general are feeling less pressure to negotiate and offer less incentives and giveaways than were offered in 1997."

But in 1997, single-family homes was the only category to show an increase in sales over 1996 with 3,605 net sales, compared with 3,441. That increase apparently came at the expense of townhouse sales, which dipped 8.9 percent from 1996. Sugarman attributed part of the decrease in townhouse sales to lower interest rates.

"Young families are reaching for lower-priced, single-family products now attainable due to basement-level mortgage rates," Sugarman said in the review. The rates, which dropped to near 7 percent by year's end, gave buyers more purchasing power.

Beachwood Estates by Chapel Homes, a 300-unit development in Edgemere that began in 1995, was the leading single-family seller in the metropolitan area with 72 sales, almost double what was sold in 1996. The homes, which average 1,850 square feet, had an average sales price of $154,488.

By comparison, the average sales price for single-family homes in the metropolitan area was $225,153, up 3.4 percent. Howard County again had the distinction of being the area's most expensive new single-family market with an average sales price of $267,558.

In fact, along the Interstate 70 market in Howard County, the average sales price ranged from $279,240 in Pulte's Cattail Woods community to $539,900 for homes by the Williamsburg Group at Kingsbridge in Burleigh Manor.

Yet, according to the Meyers report, nearly 84 percent of all metropolitan single-family home sales were for less than $300,000, and 21 percent cost less than $160,000. Baltimore and Harford counties accounted for 53 percent of all sales below $160,000, while Howard and Anne Arundel counties had 80 percent of all sales above $250,000.

"The buyer is not necessarily buying a bigger house, they are buying a house that is well-appointed for them," said Karen S. Krupsaw, vice president of corporate marketing for Regency Homes. "As opposed to going for more house, they are going for more in the house."

Townhouses averaged $124,965 in the metropolitan area, with Howard County leading with an average sale price of $146,446, despite capturing only 15.7 percent of all sales. Anne Arundel accounted for 35 percent, with Baltimore County second at 32 percent. Overall, 68 percent of all townhouses sold in the metropolitan area were within the $80,000 to $130,000 range.

Condominiums, which fell 9.8 percent in sales from 1996, had an average price of $103,902, with the highest average in Howard County at $120,528. The hottest condominium community was Sturbridge Builders' Tidewater Colony in Annapolis with 76 sales.

Two successful projects helped Owings Mills New Town into record territory a second year. Thomas Builders' Croswell Farm in New Town had 58 sales, making it the top-selling townhouse community in the metropolitan area. The units have an average size of 1,864 square feet and an average cost of $119,960.

Also boosting sales in New Town was the Hollington condominium project by Trafalger House, which sold 59 units at an average price of $98,743.