Report: Baltimore-area home prices down nearly 9%
Home prices in the Baltimore metro area are down nearly 9 percent compared with a year ago, according to new figures from real estate data firm Clear Capital.
The company, which tracked prices in the four months ending in May, uses a repeat-sale index that tries to get at the true change in home value without the skewing that can come when comparing all homes sold in one period vs. all those that sold in another.
Clear Capital says the metro area saw the same nearly 9 percent drop when comparing February-May with the previous three months, one of the largest declines among big regions. Five other metro areas saw larger drops, including No. 1 Detroit, down 13 percent.
The federally powered Washington region was one of the few to see a gain over the quarter and also over the year.
Alex Villacorta, director of research and analytics for Clear Capital, thinks it's pretty clear why the Baltimore area is on the company's "lowest performing major markets" list.
The metro area's share of bank-owned sales, though still below the nation's, is at record levels even as the national percentage has dropped, he said.
Just over 25 percent of the Baltimore area's home sales were REO homes during the February through May period, Clear Capital says. Villacorta said that share rose rapidly during the earlier part of the bust, peaked at 20 percent in early 2009 and had been receding as the homebuyer tax credit brought more people into the market -- some of whom bought non-foreclosures.
"We are now reaching a new high in terms of this saturation rate for the Baltimore metro area," he said. "Correspondingly, we are seeing prices hit a new low in the Baltimore area, effectively since the downturn began. One of the biggest drops has been over the most recent rolling quarter, which corresponds with the sharp uptick [in] the sale of distressed homes."
What about the slowdown in foreclosure sales as a result of robo-signing problems? At least some servicers have suggested that things are back to what passes for normal. And where slowdowns are still in play, "the volumes we're talking about are so massive that the pipeline had already been saturated," Villacorta said.
Nationally, bank-owned homes accounted for just over 40 percent of sales at the beginning of 2009 and are currently "leveling off around 33 percent," he said.
Clear Capital looks at a four-month period as a way to include the most recent month -- May, in this case -- and balance out the potential for incomplete data in that month by including the previous three. We should get another bite at May data, all sales rather than an index, when the company that runs the region's multiple-listing service releases statistics on Friday.
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Comments
Isn't the data completely skewed by the federal grant deadline last April?
Posted by: Anonymous | June 9, 2011 8:04 AM
The Baltimore area saw a bump up in prices a year ago, according to Clear Capital, but it was a fairly modest one. Here's a graph: http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/realestate/blog/2011/05/april_home_sales_drop_17_percent_in_baltimore_area.html
That probably explains why the "rolling" quarter-over-quarter drop is the same as the year-over-year.
Posted by: Jamie Smith Hopkins | June 9, 2011 9:23 AM
Still a ton of foreclosures not listed for sale yet, just sitting empty. Within a few blocks of me, there are a half dozen. Plus, many more foreclosures will come up this summer and fall, as the last of the property bubble teaser mortgages start to have to pay interest.
These price drops were delayed by the wasteful tax credit programs of 2009-10 and the robo-signing issues. But now reality is setting in, there are many homes for sale and few qualified buyers. And the buyers are on the prowl for bargains, knowing that prices will probably still fall another 10-20% and not reach 2005 type of prices for at least a decade, maybe more.
Posted by: chappy10 | June 9, 2011 11:56 AM
chappy- True dat
Pshssshht, aint the beer cold.
Posted by: elweedz | June 9, 2011 8:11 PM
Baltimore today is a good for real estate investment considering home price are down nearly 9 percent.
Posted by: bertdaniel | June 10, 2011 5:08 AM
b ertdaniel,
Yeah it's good for those slum lords who want tot buy up property and rent to section 8. My community is being overran with section 8. More trash is being dumped on corners, drugs, drinking, horrible children, complete disrespect for the working class. Section 8 sucks.
Posted by: ab | June 10, 2011 10:15 AM