Later this morning, the Case Shiller Index gets released. In the meanwhile, let’s take a closer look at the breakdown of home sales by price. It is rather instructive as to the state of both the housing and credit markets:    

This is a relatively new NAR data series, started several months ago. There’s no readily available history I was able to locate (anyone?). They don’t provide a data series I could see, so I had to cull the numbers from the Economists’ Commentary on their website. (No specific methodology details are given).

Regardless, what I was able to pull together (with the help of a friend) was shocking. In September 2009, single family home sale prices look like this:

21% less than $100k

49% $100K to $250k

22% $250 to $500K 5.6% $500k to $750K

1.3% $750k to $1m

1.3% $1M and up

Less than 10% of the homes sold in the US were > $500k. We know the high end has collapsed, but we are not disucssing multi-million dollar homes, mind you, but over $500k as a mere 8.2% of sales. I was surprised. (I wish we had data going back decades, which we could then normalize for inflation).

In September, 70% of transacted homes were priced under $250,000.

Check out the year-over-year growth rates — also astonishing:

Homes under $100k are up 22.5%

$100-$250 +6%

$250-$500 -5.2%

$500k-$750 +4.0%

$750-$1m -2.6%

$1M up -1.2%

In the West, home sales under $100k are up 116% in the past year. And total US SF is up 6.4% y-o-y.

Amazing stuff . . .

Source: Existing Home Sales in September Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist NAR, October 23, 2009 http://www.realtor.org/research/economists_outlook/commentaries/ehs1009

 

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