AGENT MLS HOME FINDER

The most recent news offers mixed news for the Saint Louis real estate market – with some indicators suggesting continued problems for the region and others indicating hope for the distressed economy of the community. The only strong piece of positive news came for home sales, according to an October 23, 2009 article from the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch. The piece, written by Tim Logan, found that “Home sales in the St. Louis region jumped in September by the most in at least a year as first-time buyers snatched up deals with the $8,000 tax credit. But the median price continued to drift downward across most of the region. Sales climbed 6 percent compared to the same month last year, just the second positive figure in the last 12 months and another sign that the tax credit – set to expire Nov. 30 – is spurring some boost in transactions.”

Another article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, this one published on October 21, 2009, found one of the negative points of news confronting St. Louis homes for sale. The piece, composed by David Nicklaus, noted that “Housing prices haven’t yet bottomed out nationally, according to a forecast from Fiserv, but they’re close to stabilizing in St. Louis. Nationally, according to a CNN Money account, the financial data firm expects prices to fall 11.3 percent between mid-2009 and mid-2010. It expects a recovery the following year, with prices rising 3.8 percent by mid-2011. In St. Louis, the forecast calls for a 1.3 percent decline in 2009-2010 and a 0.3 percent decline in 2010-2011.”

Foreclosures are also another problem for real estate in the greater St. Louis area, according to an October 15, 2009 article in the St. Louis Business Journal. This piece found that “The number of St. Louis-area properties at some point in the foreclosure process jumped 18 percent in September from the month before and nearly 9 percent from a year earlier, new data show. A total of 2,511 properties, or one in every 491 homes, were in the foreclosure process in September, according to data released Thursday by RealtyTrac.”