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Putting those home sales into perspective

As I was squinting at home sales records for a story, I noticed something about the city's drop in home buying: It hasn't been quite as dramatic as the slump in the metro area as a whole.

I mean that in a relative sense. Sales dropped about 30 percent in both the city and the metro area from 2005 -- the height of the boom -- through 2007, but city sales rose so much faster during the boom years that they're not back to pre-boom numbers.

Metro area sales last year fell just below the number of homes sold in 2000. City sales, on the other hand, were between '01 and '02 levels. That seems worth noting. I remember a housing advocate commenting during the boom that the real test of the city's new real estate strength would be a recession.

Read on -- or, rather, look on -- for visuals.

Here's what happened in the Baltimore metro area (statistics from Metropolitan Regional Information Systems):

RegionSalesResize.jpg

 

Now compare that with home buying in Baltimore City:

CitySalesResize.jpg

 

Comments

Very nice graphs Jamie! Realtors are often so overwhelmed by web "promoting" tools, they often forget good old numbers, statistics and graphs. As you have written:"I remember a housing advocate commenting during the boom that the real test of the city's new real estate strength would be a recession." - that had to be clear to everybody with economy education. Every growth has recession on it's tail and the bigger is growth, the harder is fall....Our Vancouver ReMax team has been onboard for a long time, so I know what I am talking about....

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About the blogger
Jamie Smith Hopkins, a Baltimore Sun reporter since 1999, writes about the regional economy. Her reporting on the housing market has won national and local awards. Hopkins is a Columbia native and has lived in Maryland all her life, save for 10 months spent covering schools in Ames, Iowa.
She trained to become a wonk by spending large chunks of time as a geek and an insufferable know-it-all.
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