Average Sales Price

YORK, Pa. - Rapidly rising home prices in the Baltimore area have prompted officials and other boosters in York, Pa., to champion their city as an affordable spot for homebuyers who are willing to look farther north for housing. Several young families and professionals in the Baltimore area have bought homes 50 miles away in York, even though commuters are frequently snarled in traffic on Interstate 83, the main route between the two cities. York residents said the traffic gets heavy when they hit the Baltimore area.

The Baltimore metro region had the best July in six years for contracts signed to buy homes, according to data released Friday by an affiliate of the region's multiple listing service. Home buyers signed 2,883 contracts last month — a nearly 20 percent increase over July 2011, according to sales figures from RealEstate Business Intelligence LLC. It was the highest July total for new contracts since 2006, said a statement from the firm, which is an arm of Metropolitan Regional Information Systems.

Sales of new homes in the Baltimore metropolitan area declined 22.9 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period last year, according to statistics released by the Meyers Group, a Washington-based firm that tracks new homes and construction. Sales of single-family homes, townhouse and condominiums totaled 1,620, down from 2,102 in the first three months of last year. March sales were 23.7 percent lower than those of March last year. The biggest drop in the first quarter was in Anne Arundel County, where sales were off 53.2 percent.

November isn't normally a popular month for home sales, but buyers - especially first-timers anxious that an $8,000 incentive might slip through their fingers - made an exception this year. The number of homes changing hands last month in the Baltimore metro area was up 77 percent compared with a year earlier, Metropolitan Regional Information Systems said Thursday. That's by far the biggest jump since MRIS began tracking the region in the late 1990s, and it comes in a month that was supposed to have been the last opportunity for claiming the federal first-time home buyer tax credit.

With the real estate market slowdown, what once made sense when it came to pricing a house no longer holds true. Across the Baltimore region, as in the rest of the country, the average sales price of houses continues to drop. In September, the average sales price in the Baltimore metropolitan area dipped more than $21,000 from the prior month to about $296,000, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. Compared to a year ago, home prices were down almost 6 percent overall - retreating to figures not seen since 2005.

The hunger for housing along Baltimore's waterfront communities has helped to drive the average sales price for existing city homes into record territory. The average sales price for a Baltimore City home broke through the $90,000 barrier, to $93,477, according to June statistics released yesterday by the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc, the multiple-listing system used by real estate agents. That figure represented an 11.07 percent increase over the comparable period last year.

Baltimore-area buyers preferred existing units in the $200,000 rangeWhat style of home did Baltimore-area buyers seek the most, yet was the hardest to find during the real estate boom of 1998?In year-end statistics released by the Metropolitan Regional Information System, the home of choice was a four-bedroom unit that sells in the $200,000 range.Overall, the Baltimore metropolitan area saw existing-home sales in 1998 increase by 20 percent over 1997, making it one of the best years for the industry in decades.

With more than 119,000 homes sold, housing sales in areas covered by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. rose 12 percent last year, the real estate information provider said. In Maryland, Montgomery County had the most sales, 14,706, and the highest average sales price of $241,800. Sales in suburban Maryland were up 15.4 percent from 1998 to 26,412 in 1999. Baltimore-area sales climbed 7.1 percent to 30,856. Sales on the Eastern Shore increased 2.6 percent to 3,070. Western Maryland sales rose 7 percent to 2,152.

The temperature of the red-hot Baltimore-area real estate market dropped a few degrees in March, as the growth in home sales slowed and prices, though still advancing strongly, did so at a less torrid pace, statistics released yesterday showed. Whether the month marked a blip or the beginning of a cool-down won't be known for months, but housing experts expect rising mortgage rates - though still low by historical standards - to weaken demand slightly. Sales in the Baltimore area were 8.7 percent higher than in March 2004, according to data compiled by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., a Rockville company that tracks sales.

The average sales price of a house in the Baltimore area raced across the $300,000 mark for the first time ever last month, showing continued strength in a heated housing market. The average price hit $309,090 in June, a more than 17 percent jump compared with June 2004, the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. reported yesterday. It took just 26 months for the average price to make the $100,00 leap, from $202,158 in May 2003, the first time it punched through that threshold, according to MRIS data.

Home prices in the Baltimore area took the biggest year-to-year plunge in almost a decade in January, falling more than 10 percent as rising joblessness and credit woes continued to batter the housing market. The average sales price in the city and five surrounding counties fell to $265,768 last month, Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. said yesterday. Sales plummeted by more than 21 percent, to just over 1,000 homes sold during the month, the Rockville-based real estate listing service said.

Baltimore-area home prices declined for the first time in at least a decade last year, preliminary figures released this weekend show, as the region's housing market feels the sting from the worsening recession. Sales statistics released by the area's real estate listing service indicate the average home price dropped 3 percent last year to $306,500 in Baltimore and its five surrounding counties compared with 2007. The figure was less than the average in 2006 as well. Sales on an annual basis slumped 28 percent, with 21,500 homes changing hands.

With the real estate market slowdown, what once made sense when it came to pricing a house no longer holds true. Across the Baltimore region, as in the rest of the country, the average sales price of houses continues to drop. In September, the average sales price in the Baltimore metropolitan area dipped more than $21,000 from the prior month to about $296,000, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. Compared to a year ago, home prices were down almost 6 percent overall - retreating to figures not seen since 2005.

Home sales in metropolitan Baltimore tumbled again in November, the third consecutive month that sales have dropped about 30 percent. Prices also fell slightly as the market headed into the traditionally slow holiday selling season. Sales in Baltimore and the five surrounding counties declined to 1,892 homes last month, a 30.77 percent retreat from November 2006, statistics released yesterday showed. The string of declines - volume fell 31.74 percent in October and 29.72 percent in September - is the most severe recorded by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, which began tracking sales through the multiple-listing service in 1999.

The number of homes sold last month in metropolitan Baltimore posted the smallest decline in 10 months as sellers became increasingly willing to forgo price gains - a trend that could signal that the sales slump here may be nearing bottom. The average price of 2,733 homes sold in Baltimore and the five surrounding counties was $309,753 last month, a slight increase from the $309,291 average in November last year and the weakest performance in at least five years, according to the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. And the 12.91 percent sales decline from a year earlier was the lowest since February and a sharp improvement over the past five months, when year-over-year sales declines ranged from 22 percent to 30 percent.

Baltimore-area home prices eked out Sept. gain Baltimore-area home prices eked out a slim gain in September, posting their weakest performance in more than five years as the number of homes sold plummeted more than 30 percent. The average sales price rose just 1.69 percent from a year earlier to $308,841 in Baltimore and five surrounding counties, Rockville-based Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. reported yesterday. It was the fourth consecutive month of single-digit increases in home values - a sharp contrast to the peak of the housing boom when price gains sometimes exceeded 20 percent - and the worst showing since prices fell 0.08 percent in June 2001, MRIS statistics showed.

Although sales of existing homes in the Baltimore metropolitan area for August remained virtually unchanged from August 1999, homebuyers may be setting the stage for a final kick to the rest of the year. With just one less property settling last month than in August 1999 (3,263 vs. 3,264), the number of pending contracts - an indication of future settlements - rose 21.56 percent. According to statistics released yesterday by the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., 3,100 contracts were signed last month compared with 2,550 in August 1999.

Sales of new and existing homes in Howard County surged 15 percent during the first six months of the year compared with the same period last year, an increase Realtors and builders say is evidence of a robust local real estate market."

Home sales in the Baltimore region dipped in March, the sixth straight month of decline over the previous year, and the buildup of inventory escalated as the market headed into the crucial spring selling season. Pricing, however, remained strong, posting double-digit gains over a year earlier. The 3,170 homes sold in Baltimore and five surrounding counties was a 13 percent decline from March 2005, according to figures released by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., a Rockville company that tracks homes sold through the multiple-listing service, reported yesterday.