Abq Homes Sales Up in August

Metro Albuquerque home sales increased in August over July. The news surprised me because the 815 pending sales of single family detached homes during July were a 119 unit, or 13% drop from June. Pending sales provide a rough leading indicator of sales closed the following month. Therefore I expected August sales closed to drop. The difference came in the proportion of July pending sales that turned into closed sales during August. Sales closed during August represented 79% of July’s pending sales. Sales closed during July were 67% of sales pending during June. Why? No idea. A hint comes from the prices of those sales closed during August. Both the median price ($163,808) and the average price ($197,671) hit the second lowest level of the year and were down more than 10% from August 2010. The August median price dropped 8% from July. The average was down 6%. With an average of 76 days on the market, single family detached homes has the shortest sales period of 2010. The average sales period was 89 days during February. Some insight for us comes from Elliott D. Pollack & Company of Phoenix. The oversupply of homes there is getting absorbed, however slowly. However, Pollack sees a housing market recovery taking four or five more years. Phoenix is adding a few jobs, 22,300 in the year from July 2010 to July 2011.