Today, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their Existing Home Sales Report for June indicating that while single family home sales increased slightly on a year-over-year basis, median selling prices continued to decline significantly.Existing single family home sales were up 0.2% on a year-over-year basis while the median selling price declined 15% over the same period.
More notably though, Condos continue to show substantial weakness with sales declining 3.1% on a year-over-year basis with median selling prices declining 18.9% over the same period.
The NAR leadership continues their truly shameless rant against improved appraisal standards with their chief economist Lawrence Yun blathering on about how unfair it is for distressed homes to be included in the appraisal process:
“Despite the rise in closed transactions, many Realtors® are reporting lost sales as a result of new appraisal standards that went into effect May 1 of this year. … Clearly the process needs to be revised, but the most logical approach is to use appraisers with local expertise, industry designations and access to local data, who make a physical examination of the property and use apples-to-apples comparisons with nearby home sales, … In many cases, normal homes are being compared with distressed homes sold at a discount, which often are in subpar condition – this is causing real harm to both buyers and sellers.”
The following (click for larger versions) are charts showing sales for single family homes, plotted monthly, for 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 as well as national existing home inventory and month supply.
Below is a chart consolidating all the year-over-year changes reported by NAR in their most recent report.
