Housing Market

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.

Housing sales in the Baltimore metropolitan area might not rise to the feverish pitch of 1998, but there is little doubt that the surge that started a year ago will continue into this year."

New contracts on homes for sale in the Baltimore area rose to their highest June level since 2007 — a positive sign for a housing market trying to heal after a years-long roller-coaster ride. Buyers and sellers struck deals on nearly 2,600 homes in Baltimore and its five surrounding counties last month, Rockville-based Metropolitan Regional Information Systems said Monday. That's about 30 percent more than the number of contracts signed last June — when activity plummeted after a federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers expired — and exceeds recessionary June 2008 by almost as much.

Howard County's glory days are over -- at least for now.Once Maryland's prized county when it came to annual revenue growth, Howard is now mired in financial stagnation.And continued weakness in the county's residential real estate market -- as evidenced by the latest data on average selling prices and county assessments -- is a strong sign that the bad times may continue."Howard County has had more of a change in its fortune than most counties in the state," said Michael A. Conte, a University of Baltimore economist and director of the school's Regional Economic Studies Program.

March is usually the month when homebuyers get serious, when sales rocket out of the winter doldrums - but not this year. Home sales in the Baltimore area last month fell 34 percent from a year earlier, the seventh straight month of declines roughly in that range, Metropolitan Regional Information Systems reported yesterday. The average sales price slid almost 3 percent to about $297,700, or $8,900 less than a year ago. A larger-than-usual jump in area sales from January to February had fanned hopes that the housing market was approaching a bottom.

In the society Vladimir and Dora Ponomareva had known all their lives, it was a crime to own a house, an unthinkable evil to pay to borrow money.But within two years of settling in the United States, the new immigrants had a real estate agent and a mortgage, neither of which had existed back in Russia. The couple, a former physician and former professor of literature, bought a townhouse in Owings Mills last fall and joined the growing ranks of immigrants fueling the housing market.Back home, "Our life was very, very hard.

They are older, they are established and they have money to spend. But right now in Baltimore, senior citizens have few places to go.New-home builders were told yesterday that the active senior adult housing market has yet to be fully realized in the metropolitan market and it's time for area builders to seize an emerging opportunity."

Carroll County housing officials want an updated picture of what kind of homes are available -- from mansions to overcrowded substandard apartments -- as well as what kind of homes people want and can afford. This study of housing stock and needs will range from young people new to the work force who want to stay in the area to large families in need of assistance, said Jolene G. Sullivan, director of the county's Department of Citizen Services. The county has changed considerably since the last study more than 10 years ago, she said.

Some real estate experts forecast a cooling of Maryland's red-hot housing market next year because of increased supply, higher mortgage interest rates and fewer investors. More than 180 real estate professionals gathered to discuss issues such as rising housing prices at the seventh annual Maryland Real Estate & Construction Forecast Conference in Clarksville Wednesday. Most expect housing sales and prices to remain strong - just not at the record pace of the past few years. Anirban Basu, chairman and chief executive officer of the Baltimore economic and policy consulting company Sage Policy Group Inc., said he expects Maryland's housing market to slow next year because of a decrease in demand.

Constant talk of a housing bubble about to burst and actual signs of a slowdown have hammered home builder stocks. If you're a contrarian and reason that the long-term demand for new housing far exceeds any calamity the current scare could produce, you have an opportunity to buy home builder stocks at reasonable prices. But if you believe the dire predictions that have deflated these stock prices - and some experts do - skip the rest of this column. Back when the sky seemed the limit, the Dow Jones U.S. Home Construction Index ran up 450 percent from the beginning of 2001 through July 2005.