August 28, 2012 (Chris Moore)

Existing home sales increased slightly from the previous week, but remained at similar levels seen over the previous six weeks according to the weekly National Home Sales Snapshot released by DataQuick while home prices remained unchanged for the second consecutive week.

There were 218,318 properties sold over the previous thirty-day rolling period ending August 23rd, up 1.5 percent from the previous week’s total of 215,156 sold properties and almost the same as the 218,291 properties sold four weeks ago.

Sales volume was 14.3 percent above the previous year’s cycle peak of 190,934 sales which occurred during the 30-day rolling period prior to September 1st.

Last week’s home sales volume was 10.4 percent higher than the 197,783 homes sold during the same period a year ago and was 1.7 percent higher than during the same period three years ago when 214,612 homes were sold.

The median price of a home sold over the current thirty-day rolling period remained unchanged for the second consecutive week at $200,000 and was 1.5 percent higher than what it was four weeks ago when the median sales price was $197,000.

Home prices were 5.3 percent higher than the same period a year ago when the median price of a home was $190,000 and were 4.2 percent higher than what they were three years ago when the median price was also $192,000. It was the 20th consecutive week that year-over-year home prices surpassed the previous year’s levels.

Over the last five years, median home prices nationwide have ranged from a high of $275,000 to a low of $168,500.

Home sales volume over the last five years has ranged from a high of 339,669 properties sold to a low of 124,051.

The National Home Sales Snapshot includes 98 out of the top 100 metropolitan statistical areas covering 66.25 percent of U.S. home sales.

Tags: DataQuick, home sales, median home price, sales volume

Source:
DataQuick