Abq Homes Price Down, Sales Up

Prices down. Sales up.

That’s been the metro Albuquerque real estate theme for some months now. It continued in March, according to the March sales report from the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors.

While month-to-month performance is subject to outside factors such as seasonality (more sales when it is warmer), more things do seem to be happening in the marketplace.

For single family detached homes, March saw 596 sales closed, an 18% or 90 unit increase from February. More important, I think, sales increased 26 units or 4.6% from February 2011.

Those 596 closed sales (most of them anyway) came from 928 deals that were pending in February. March closed sales were 64% of February pending. Pending sales hit 1,021 for March, a 10%, or 90 unit, increase from February, seasonal growth, perhaps. As compared to March 2011, the pending sales increase was 13%, or 118 units. If 64% of the March pending sales close in April, that would be 655 sales. We’ll see.

Prices remain another story. March average and median sales peaked in 2007.

The March median sales price, $159,000, was down just shy of two percent from both February 2012 and March 2011. It was a five percent decline from March 2011 for the March 2012 average price of $189,676.

Home sold in an average of 83 days during March, a bit faster than the 87-day sales period during January and February and the 86 day time during March 2011.

Townhouse and condominium sales typically are less than ten percent of the single family home sales. Townhouse/condo sales, 56 units during March were down three from March 2011. The median price dropped one percent from March 2011 while the average, $150,816, increased eight percent from March 2011.