For every home that sold in the first half of the year, 10 more would-be sellers in the Baltimore metro area were wishing, waiting, hoping.
With credit and economic woes weighing on buyers, that figure is twice as high as normal. And it's night and day compared with the peak of the buying frenzy three years ago.
Sales dropped substantially in all but a handful of communities in the metro area, according to a Baltimore Sun analysis of ZIP code data for the first six months of the year vs. the corresponding period last year. The number of homes changing hands in the city and five surrounding counties hit its lowest point since at least 2000, as far back as records for January through June go.
Sellers are feeling the squeeze. Average sale prices fell in three-quarters of the region's ZIP codes. Half showed price declines of at least 5 percent.
Rob Hruz Jr., a local real estate investor and appraiser, took a hit on a property in Baltimore's Northwood neighborhood. After rehabbing it inside and out - adding a four-car parking pad, among other amenities - he had to drop his asking price of $199,000 more than 10 percent to sell.
"I'm breaking even," said Hruz, who worked with a partner on that deal, scheduled to close at the end of the month. "When we bought it, we were going to make twenty to thirty thousand dollars."
A clear picture on where home values stand - let alone where they're headed - is proving elusive. Averages are being skewed, both down and up, by the sharp change in the types of homes selling this year. High-end homes are languishing on the market in many parts of the Baltimore suburbs now while less expensive homes find buyers. The reverse is true in the city, which has seen an unusually large drop in sales of homes under $250,000 - a result economists blame on the subprime lending implosion.
The bottom line, at least, isn't hard to see, said Anirban Basu, chief executive of Sage Policy Group, a Baltimore economic and policy consulting firm. "This housing market remains in bad shape," he said.
On the other hand, it could be worse. Las Vegas has 17 homes on the market for every one that sells rather than Baltimore's 10, said Kenneth Wenhold, Mid-Atlantic regional director for the real estate information firm Metrostudy. South Florida has 27. Both are among the slump's hardest-hit areas.
