November 5, 2012 (Chris Moore)

Home prices posted their first significant decline since the beginning of March last week, falling 1.1 percent from the previous week according to the weekly National Home Sales Snapshot released by DataQuick while sales of existing homes saw a modest gain of 0.1 percent.

There were 211,188 properties sold over the previous thirty-day rolling period ending November 1st, up 164 sales from the previous week’s total of 211,024 sold properties but still 1.4 percent lower than the 214,076 properties sold four weeks ago.

Sales volume was 4.7 percent lower than the current year’s cycle peak of 221,695 sales which occurred during the 30-day rolling period prior to September 13th and were back at the levels seen at the beginning of July.

Last week’s home sales volume was 15.8 percent higher than the 182,314 homes sold during the same period a year ago and was 0.8 percent lower than during the same period three years ago when 212,924 homes were sold.

The median price of a home sold over the current thirty-day rolling period fell by $2,200 from the previous week to $197,700. It was the second consecutive week that home prices have slipped after staying near $200,000 for the past three months.

Home prices were 8.6 percent higher than the same period a year ago when the median price of a home was $182,000 and were 5.4 percent higher than what they were three years ago when the median price was $187,500. It was the 29th 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