Straight Shooting Real Estate

The April Housing Market report from the Arkansas Realtors Association is a mixed bag.

At first glance, at least.

In April, there were 2,059 single-family, new and existing homes sold by Realtors through reporting multiple listing services in Arkansas. That total is 8.04 percent lower than the 2.239 homes sold last year. Average sales prices were down 2.59 percent –$141,953 compared to $145,733 in the same month last year.

However, the April report was a substantial improvement over the one issued by March. The March report was better than the one for February, which was an improvement over the January report. Want proof? Click right here , download the housing market reports from the Arkansas Realtors Association issued this year and compare the numbers for yourself.

If you’d rather not do that, it’s easy to see what a substantial improvement the April report is just by taking a look at the year-to-date totals. As I mentioned, the 2,059 sales in April represents an 8.04 percent decline from a year ago. However, sales have dropped 18.17 percent when comparing the year-to-year totals, meaning the decline has slowed. The same is true of average sales prices. The 2.59 percent drop reported in April is better than the 4.95 percent drop in the average sales price reported for the first four months of the year (an average of $139,643 compared to $146,922 through April 2008).

In other words, we’re seeing the rate of decline slow and there is hope that we’ll eventually see the market making gains again. It’s worth mentioning that sales in Arkansas typically peak in the months of May through August and there’s no reason to believe this year will be different.

A good number of Realtors in this state are hoping the momentum gained during the summer months will carry through to the fall and winter. Should we see gains in September and October, then we can truly start talking about a recovery in the housing market. Whether or not things will play out that way is anyone’s guess, of course, as unknown factors like consumer confidence, continued government action and other items come into play. Will mortgage rates remain low and will the overall economy improve between now and September? We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?