Home Sales Down from June

The good news is that metro Albuquerque home sales during July were up over July 2010, according to figures just released by the Greater Albuquerque Association of realtors. Sales closed during July on 625 single family detached homes, a 53 unit, 12.2% increase from July 2010. Pending sales, 815 during July, were up 63 units or 8.4% from July 2010.
But there’s a catch. Isn’t there always?
Those 2010 sales were artificially depressed by the Obama administration’s first time buyer tax credit, which sucked sales into the months before the tax credit ended April 30, 2010.
The 2011 reality is that July sales, under “normal” seasonal market behavior, should have been a bit more than June.
Didn’t happen. July sales closed were down 33 units or 5% from June. Pending sales, the leading indicator for sales the following month, dropped 119 units or 13% from June.
Further, 67% of June’s 934 pending sales turned into July closed sales. For June, 73% of May’s 899 pending sales turned into June closed sales.
In other words, not only were there fewer sales during June, fewer of May’s pending sales became closed sales. (Statistically, this doesn’t quite work because some of July’s closed sales were pending in May. I figure these laggard pending sales average out over time.) From this highly informed (yeah, right) perspective August looks a tad ugly.
Prices were up from July 2010 but down from June 2011.
With 99 homes sold, the most popular price category was for homes between $200,000 and $249,000.