AGENT MLS HOME FINDER

The Houston real estate market seems to be in continued trouble, despite some distortions in the market caused due to a recent hurricane strike. According to the business portion of the Houston Chronicle published on October 20, 2009, “September ended a two-year run of monthly home sales declines, but it didn’t have much to do with an improving market. Single-family home sales in the Houston area soared 32 percent last month, in large part because housing activity came to a near halt at the same time last year when the region was still reeling from Hurricane Ike. ‘We all didn’t literally get our lights turned on for a week to two weeks,’ said Steve Barnes, president and chief operating officer of the Houston Division of Coldwell Banker United, Realtors. The startling year-over-year comparison showed up in foreclosures, too.”

A smidgen of good news for Houston homes for sale was reported by the Houston Business Journal on November 10, 2009. According to the piece, “The median price of an existing home in the Houston area rose by 0.2 percent to $160,600 during the third quarter, according to figures released Tuesday by the National Association of Realtors. The median price in the same quarter last year was $160,200. Total sales in Texas for the third quarter were up 9.8 percent from the second quarter, but were down 1.9 percent year-over-year. For the nation as a whole, the median price of an existing home fell 11 percent in the third quarter compared to the second quarter, NAR reported. Existing home sales rose 11 percent between the second and third quarters, and were also up 5.9 percent from the third quarter of 2008.”

Foreclosures were another significant problem for real estate in Houston, according to another article in the Houston Business Journal.  This piece, written on November 5, 2009, found that “The foreclosure rate in the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown area in September this year was 0.5 percent higher than in the same month last year, according to a new report from First American CoreLogic. The rate measures the percentage of loans in some stage of foreclosure.”