Report: Baltimore region had one of the biggest drops in home prices in the last year
Home prices were about 9 percent lower in the Baltimore region in June than they were a year earlier, one of the largest declines among large markets, according to real estate data firm FNC.
The company says its latest analysis of 30 metro areas shows Baltimore with the sixth-largest loss in prices year-over-year, behind Orlando (down about 16 percent), Las Vegas and Atlanta (both down about 13 percent) and Sacramento and Tampa (both down about 11 percent).
Most regions saw price drops compared with a year ago, mind you. FNC said it found increases in only two large markets: Detroit -- yes, really -- and Boston, both of which posted gains of about 4 percent.
It's interesting to see how different the various measures of price changes have been lately -- all down, but not by the same amount. Here are some other recent figures, for comparison's sake:
CoreLogic, another real estate data firm, reports an approximately 3 percent drop in Baltimore-area home prices in June vs. a year earlier. (Here's a blog post about July numbers; the report it links to has earlier figures, including June.)
Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, which runs the local multiple-listing service, shows Baltimore-area prices dropping about 7 percent on average. (Here's the link to its RealEstate Business Intelligence stats.)
At least some of the differences can be explained by different slices of the market being measured.
FNC's index tracks both new home sales and resales, but only the "non-distressed" part of the total. In an attempt to get at the true change in value, it uses appraisal data as well as sales records in a "hedonic" model.
CoreLogic's figure above is also non-distress -- no foreclosures or short sales -- but looks specifically at single-family houses and townhouses. The company's analysis considers repeat sales of the same homes over time in its effort to weed out apples-to-oranges comparisons ... which means by definition that they must be resales, not new homes.
MRIS, meanwhile, isn't applying any mathematical wizardry to try to get apples-to-apples. It's looking at all homes that sold through the multiple-listing service this year vs. all the ones that sold last year.
What numbers do you like to look at?
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Comments
Similar to how Baltimore was late getting onto the inflated balloon era pricing (and late getting onto the inevitable foreclosure shock effect) Baltimore would be late in having sellers come to recognize that the meteoric rise was a balloon.
But as indicated in the other post there are still plenty of would be sellers in the "wishful thinking" zone.
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Market: 1998 prices adjusted for 13-14 years of condition changes and immediate market specifics (which often as not will push that '98 number down not up)... plus some modest COL bump in the more stable middle class areas.
Posted by: MrRational | September 8, 2011 11:50 AM
Well, it has been a while since I posted, but everything going as planned.
1999 prices dead ahead - and barring any more government meddling, they are on the near horizon.
Yee-hah
Posted by: Darwin Rules | September 8, 2011 4:23 PM