Sales of new and existing homes in the Triad rose 15.5% in the fourth quarter of 2009. That sounds like a huge increase to me. Must mean it had really tanked before!
Increase in sales the last quarter of 2009 is credited to the low interest rates and the government tax incentive to buyers. The tax incentive was scheduled to end in November so many people who were planning to buy stepped up their efforts to take advantage of that incentive.
This is the first “year-over-year” increase in three years, meaning the first time there has been an increase in sales one quarter compared to the same quarter the previous year. The last year-over-year quarterly increase came in fourth quarter 2006 when sales reached 3,495.
Alamance, Guilford and Forsyth counties had 2,248 sales the last quarter of 2009 compared to 1,946 the same quarter in 2008. Looking back to 2006, its an increase, but still an increase over a very lean 2008.
According to Market Opportunity data, in the fourth quarter, 73.6 percent of new and existing home sales were below $200,000. That, again, shows that much of the traffic was from buyers wanting to take advantage of the $8000 first time home buyer tax credit.
The median selling price fell to $146,000. And,sales for the entire year were still down considerably. For all of 2009, there were only 8,586 sales, a 20.5 percent decline compared to 10,804 in 2008.
Now that the tax incentive is ending in April, will housing prices tank again?
Prices could drop to new lows since people who would normally have bought in 2010 may have already purchased to get the tax incentive. We used to see that when we were in commissioned sales; if you had a big sale one month, the next month sales were practically non-existent. We knew that those big sale months simply stole from future sales as they encouraged people to buy sooner.
Guess we’ll have to wait until December to know for sure!
