June 4, 2012 (Chris Moore)
Home sales continued to improve last week, nearly matching last year’s sales peak, while home prices inched up slightly, surpassing the previous year’s prices for the eighth consecutive week according to the weekly National Home Sales Snapshot released by DataQuick.
There were 190,109 properties sold over the previous thirty-day rolling period ending May 31st, up 1.5 percent from the previous week’s total of 187,362 sold properties and 6.8 percent higher than the 178,695 properties sold four weeks ago.
Sales volume was only 0.4 percent below the current year’s cycle peak of 190,934 sales which occurred during the 30-day rolling period prior to September 1st and at the current sales rate should pass last year’s peak this week.
Last week’s home sales volume was 4.8 percent higher than the 181,395 homes sold during the same period a year ago and was 10.1 percent higher than during the same period three years ago when 172,635 homes were sold.
The median price of a home sold over the current thirty-day rolling period increased by $1,000 from last week to $186,000 and was 3.4 percent higher than what it was four weeks ago when the median sales price was $179,900.
Home prices were also 6.3 percent higher than the same period a year ago when the median price of a home was $175,000 and were 3.3 percent higher than what they were three years ago when the median price was $180,000. It was the eighth 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
