April 23, 2012 (Chris Moore)
Home sales continued to gain momentum last week and have increased over 15 percent in the last month while home prices continued to impress, surpassing the previous year’s prices for the third consecutive week, according to the National Home Sales Snapshot released by DataQuick.
There were 169,999 properties sold over the previous thirty day rolling period ending April 19th, up 3.7 percent from the previous week’s total of 163,984 properties sold and 15.3 percent higher than the 147,458 properties sold four weeks ago.
Sales volume is still down 11.0 percent from the current 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 2.3 percent higher than the 166,103 homes sold during the same period a year ago and was 8.6 percent higher than during the same period three years ago when 156,497 homes were sold.
The median price of a home sold over the current thirty day rolling period also improved for the sixth consecutive week, increasing by $1,350 from the previous week to $176,500 and is at its highest level since mid-January. Home prices are up 3.8 percent from a month ago.
Home prices were 2.5 percent higher than the same period a year ago when the median price of a home was $172,250 but were still 1.4 percent lower than the same period three years ago when the median price was $179,000. It was the third 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
