A. A lot less than they did in 2005 and 2006, but only down a bit from 2007.

Here, have a chart:

Source: Maryland Department of Planning, U.S. Census Bureau.

Worthy of note: Seventy-five percent of the units approved from January through April 2005 were single-family homes. This year, it's 56 percent.

Also: Building permits were up in Baltimore County this year vs. 2005 -- unlike the rest of the region. Builders pulled permits for 594 homes, an increase of 15 percent from January-April 2005. The majority were not single-family.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Maryland home sale prices in the first three months of the year dropped 4.8 percent from a year earlier, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said today. That's the eighth largest decline in the country.

Here's the bottom 10:

1. California, down 19 percent

2. Nevada, down 17 percent

3. Florida, down 15 percent

4. Arizona, down 11 percent

5. Michigan, down 8.9 percent

6. New Hampshire, down 5.1 percent

7. Minnesota, down 5 percent

8. Maryland, down 4.8 percent

9. Ohio, down 3.9 percent

10. Virginia, down 3.7 percent

You can see OFHEO's news release HERE and its data HERE. OFHEO says home sales prices are down 3.1 percent nationally, the largest drop on record. (In its press release, it has a ranking of the states that includes not just sales but also refinance mortgages, so it's a bit apples-to-oranges to the national figure. That's why I crunched the data to come up with a purchase-only ranking.)

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
                    

So you can see that at a glance, I spent the morning making the Maryland Department of Planning's building-permit statistics more visual.

Here's the trend for residential permits statewide, first quarter 2000 through first quarter 2008:

Read on for the local experience ...

Continue reading "Permit to build" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Growth slowed last year in Baltimore County, Carroll and Harford, the estimates suggest.

Census workers estimate a population decline of about 3,500 people in Baltimore City, which would be a setback from the slight gain in '06 if the figure stands. The city has routinely appealed the counts and ended up with higher numbers, and it anticipates challenging this time around, Kelly Brewington reports today.

Maryland's growth as a whole was slow, which the Baltimore Metropolitan Council's Dunbar Brooks attributes to the economy and housing prices, Brewington reports:

Even before the economy weakened, Maryland's high housing costs drove residents to neighboring states with more affordable housing, he said.

The number of people leaving both the region and the state is what struck me most about the census counts. In the Baltimore metro area, 8,600 more people moved out than moved in. The number of Marylanders moving out of state outnumbered people coming the other direction by about 18,500. In other words, the only true growth is coming from babies born to residents.

Look at the decade as a whole -- 2000 through 2007 -- and both the metro area and the state have more people coming in than out. That means the change has been fairly recent, and housing costs probably are playing a role.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Yes, this did take us a while to put together, and yes, I am feeling squintier than ever from checking all those numbers. A grateful thanks to Sun intern Megan Hartley for pitching in with the double-checking.

This information goes hand-in-hand with a story I wrote about foreclosure cases, which notes that many of the counties seeing the biggest increases are well-off and high-priced. Click on the link for the interactive tool and you'll see the story as well.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

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.

Continue reading "Putting those home sales into perspective" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

You've seen the most and least expensive ZIP codes in the metro area and the most and least expensive neighborhoods in the city. You might think that covers it. But wait, there's more!

When I sliced and diced the 2007 sales figures, I did some suburbs-only calculations. I went so far as to slice-and-dice the ZIP codes that are part-Baltimore, part-'burb.

That means I can reveal to you the most affordable suburban ZIPs. If you're set on suburban living but can't spend $300,000-plus on a house -- or if you're just curious -- then read on.

Continue reading "More affordable 'burbs" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

If you glanced at the most and least expensive local ZIP codes in my post last week, you might have noticed that none of the priciest and almost all the cheapest were in the city. But here's the thing: Though ZIP codes are pretty good stand-ins for communities in the 'burbs, Baltimore is all about small neighborhoods. There are quite a few packed into most ZIPs.

So, without further ado, here are last year's most and least expensive city neighborhoods:

Continue reading "Most and least expensive -- city" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Why yes, I am going to tell you. But why don't you guess first. Go on ... I'll wait ...

Continue reading "Most and least expensive places of '07" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

You can read the story HERE. Check out the interactive maps, too -- HERE for the metro-area ZIP codes and HERE for city neighborhoods.

As you know if you've been following along for a while, I fear the apples-to-kumquats comparisons that can happen when the homes that sold in a community last year are very different than the ones sold the year before. You can end up with a huge change in price just because it was all older rowhomes one year and newly built condos in the other, for instance.

So as usual, I threw out any ZIP or city neighborhood that didn't have at least 10 sales each year, figuring that would help. I also -- for my peace of mind -- did a separate analysis of all the areas with a large number of sales, just to see if the overall trend remained the same. It did. (Cue the sigh of relief.)

Just remember when you're checking out individual ZIP codes or city neighborhoods, though, that there could be factors at work more complicated than simple gains or losses in value. Some of that could be related to the market: A drop in a pricey area might signal that homes that were average in 2006 are sitting on the market now, having trouble finding a buyer, while less-pricey homes are getting contracts.

Overall, expensive areas were more likely to drop in average price last year while cheaper areas were more likely to rise.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
                    

So here's the deal:

The average price for homes sold in the region -- Baltimore and its five surrounding counties -- was about $317,000. That's up about 2.5 percent from 2006, the smallest increase since MRIS began tracking the metro area in the late '90s.

Sales fell about 20 percent, a bigger drop than 2006. The year started out looking like the market might pull itself out of the slump, but it ended significantly worse -- from a seller and macroeconomic perspective. Economists attribute the change to the 180-degree shift in lending.

Total sales: about 30,000. That's just above 1998, the first year on record.

See tomorrow's story for more details. I also did number-crunching that I couldn't fit into the article and will share it here once I get the time.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 5:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

Click HERE for an Excel file that shows ZIP codes in the Baltimore metro area, ranked by change in average price in November 2007 vs. November 2006.

Click HERE to see the ZIP codes ranked by change in sales.

Click HERE to see an alphabetized list.

You really only need one, of course: Once it's open, you can sort it whichever way you'd like.

Just remember that I've only included those ZIP codes with at least five sales in November 2007 and at least five sales in November 2006. That's my attempt to toss out the apples-and-watermelons comparisons that are much more likely when an area sees only a handful of sales (you can imagine the price skewing if a couple mansions sold in one month and a couple condos sold in the other).

Even so, there's almost certainly other examples of skewing. Keep that in mind, especially for ZIP codes showing huge swings, positive or negative.

The statistics are crunched from home sales data provided by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. You can look up results of individual ZIP codes -- including days on market, which I don't have access to -- by going HERE. MRIS says the home sales database it provides me is newer and therefore more accurate than its look-up page, which should be why the two don't always agree.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 8:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
                    

If you've been following along at home, you know that the Baltimore metro area's housing market had slightly lower average prices last month and a big drop in sales. But if real estate is really about location, location, location, wouldn't it be useful to know what happened at a more local level? 

I thought so, which is why I've just crunched the numbers that way. If you focus on the 87 ZIP codes in the metro area that had at least five sales last month and at least five sales in November 2006, according to data from Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, here's what you'll see:

Continue reading "A closer look at local home sales" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 8:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

All right, it's probably not amazing, it's certainly not one-time-only, and there's no money back because it's free. But I stand by splendiferous.

By popular request, I've crunched the October home sales tracked by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems so you can look at ZIP codes throughout the Baltimore area and see how sales numbers and average prices changed vs. a year earlier. (See this post for the big picture.)

Continue reading "Home sales trends in your community" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                    

A new analysis -- by which I mean, of course, number-crunching and general squinting here at Wonk central -- shows that the big drop in Baltimore-area home sales in October was a pain felt in the vast majority of communities.

Here's a look at trends at the ZIP code level, taken from deals tracked by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. I'm including the 87 ZIP codes that had at least five sales in October 2007 and at least five sales in October 2006:

SALES TRENDS:

Number of ZIP codes where home sales fell: 70

Number where sales rose: 10

Number with no change in sales figures: 7

PRICE TRENDS: 

Continue reading "Home sales in October: By the numbers" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Maryland's construction sector -- which includes commercial as well as residential -- has felt the hit of the housing market change. But commercial building has remained strong enough to help keep job growth positive.

Here's a snapshot of recent trends, with data from the U.S. Department of Labor. It's an October to October chart, so the 3,600-job growth listed for 2007 is Oct. 2006 through Oct. 2007:

As you can see, the most recent 12-month stretch has the least job growth since 2002 -- which, though it was the year after a recession, was actually a lousier time for employment growth across sectors in Maryland than 2001.

But it could be worse ...

Continue reading "What's happened to construction jobs" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 7:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Only three states saw worse numbers: Nevada, Florida and Arizona, often singled out as states particularly hard-hit by the bust. California, another state that tends to make the list, did slightly better than Maryland at fifth worst. (These are seasonally adjusted annualized numbers, in case you were wondering.)

The Realtors also released price data for the metro areas today. Single-family houses that sold in the Baltimore area in the summer had contract prices slightly above those sold a year earlier, up 1.7 percent. That ranked it 70th out of the 93 metro areas with reported price gains.

Just over 50 metro areas saw price drops. The biggest, at just over 12 percent, came in Palm Bay, Fla.

One reader asked about Cumberland, which was seeing big gains earlier in the year. (I wrote a story about it.) It's still fairly high up on the price-gain rankings, but it has dropped to No. 19, with a gain of about 7 percent. Bismarck, N.D. is tops at 15 percent.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

The federal government released numbers today that suggest permits in October were down nearly 25 percent from a year earlier. Housing starts, the number of homes newly under construction, dropped about 16 percent from a year earlier.

But wait, you say: Housing starts in October were higher than they were in September! Up 3 percent! Isn't that good news?

Nope, sorry. The margin of error is nearly 11 percent, plus or minus, so you wouldn't want to bet money that October was actually better than September.

In a statement he put out about the data, economist Charles W. McMillion of MBG Information Services in Washington sums up the big picture for the single-family piece of the market:

There were only 884,000 new single-family homes started in Oct. 2007, the fewest monthly total since October 1991 and -33.8% fewer than the 1,336,000 homes started in January 1959 – the earliest data on record. The 807,000 new permits to construct single-family homes in Oct. 2007 were the fewest since November 1991 and -4.6% lower than in January, 1960 – the earliest data on record.

 

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, which released the numbers today, has sales comparisons going back to March 1999.

The second-worst performance was in September of 2006, followed by September of this year. Economists attribute the increased problems in the last two months to the pullback in subprime lending, the rise in jumbo-loan rates and other mortgage trauma that hit in August.

In the good news/bad news department:

Continue reading "Prices up, but sales way down" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

The bad news? Only because August's sales numbers were revised downward.

The federal government, which released the numbers this morning, said the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales last month was 770,000 homes, vs. 735,000 in August. Its original estimate for August was 795,000. (And, as The Big Picture blog points out, the so-called increase is well within the survey's margin of error.)

Sales fell about 23 percent compared with September of last year, the government estimated.

On the other hand, the inventory of unsold homes shrank. About 520,000 homes were for sale at the end of last month, down 15,000 from August and 40,000 from a year ago.

But -- there's always a "but" nowadays, isn't there? -- a growing number of those unsold homes are finished and sitting empty, rather than planned or under construction.

I feel like that old Simpsons sketch.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

The seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales was a little more than 5 million. This time last year, it was 6.2 million.

Inventory has continued to climb as well. At the current pace of sales, it would take 10.5 months to strike deals on all the homes listed, the Realtors said. It was under 7.5 months this time last year.

MarketWatch notes that the inventory of single-family homes hit a 20-year high.

The NAR blamed the drop on the credit crunch, which intensified in August. "Some of the cancelled transactions will move forward as buyers apply for other loans," Lawrence Yun, NAR's senior economist, predicted in a statement.

Prices were also down last month. The average sales price dropped about 3 percent, to just under $258,000. The median price -- which represents the typical home, the one in the middle -- fell a bit more, about 4 percent.

Read on for a chart from Wachovia graphing how unsold home numbers have risen. (You'll see that they peaked in July. But because the pace of sales keeps slowing, the months needed to strike deals for all that inventory continues to rise.)

Continue reading "Home sales down, inventory up" »

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

The IMF says:

Subprime delinquencies on the 2006 vintage have exceeded delinquencies on loans originated in 2000 at comparable seasoning (loan age)—the worst performing vintage in the recent past—and are expected to rise further if the historical pattern holds. Loans originated in 2007 do not have sufficient seasoning to gauge overall performance, but the loan attributes are similar to those issued on loans in 2006. Thus, some of the same risk layering characteristics endemic to the 2006 vintage appear to have persisted at least through the first half of 2007, despite reportedly tighter underwriting standards.

Calculated Risk pulled another chart from the report that shows scheduled resets for adjustable-rate mortgages. Click here to see it.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 6:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Performance of U.S. homebuilders vs. S&P benchmarks

Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ put together this chart, which gives you a snapshot of how investors have run away from homebuilders' stock. The key is hard to see, I know: Purple is the S&P 500 Homebuilding Sub-Industry Index, red is the major U.S. homebuilders and blue is the S&P 500 index as a whole.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 5:38 PM |