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October 27, 2009

Home buying and selling in the Baltimore area

More buyers signed contracts for homes in the Baltimore metro area last month than a year earlier -- 32 percent more. You knew this already if you've been crunching numbers or hanging on my every word, but here's something I haven't mentioned already: Homes newly listed for sale last month were down slightly.

Fewer homes coming into the pipeline, more going out -- that's all to the good for would-be sellers.

We're not back to a pre-bubble balance between new contracts and new for-sale listings, though. Here's a graph that tells the tale, showing stats for the month of September throughout the decade:

ListingsContracts.jpg

Source: Baltimore Sun analysis of Metropolitan Regional Information Systems data

The number of new listings was 62 percent larger than newly signed contracts last month. By comparison, new listings were about 40 percent more numerous than new contracts in September of 2000 and 2001.

On the upside: 62 percent more new listings than new contracts is a lot closer to normal than 119 percent (September '08) or 165 percent (September '07).

The approximately 4,300 new listings that hit the market last month are also the lowest since 2003, when they dropped below 4,000.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 7:00 AM | | Comments (2)
Categories: Housing stats
        

Comments

Do you have any idea how many of these transactions are foreclosure related?

Wish I did, smithbaltimore. This is drawn from the monthly statistics issued by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, and it doesn't break down the numbers by foreclosure, short sale, etc.

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About Jamie Smith Hopkins
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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