Home sales in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward counties are up according to new statistics provided by DataQuick. The total sales last month marked the highest sales in June since 2007, up 6% from the prior year. The vast majority of these sales, however, are for condos and resale homes, with new-home sales dropping 9% for the month and marking the lowest tally for the month of June on record. Positive sales numbers are attributed to lower prices, and some analysts suspect the increase in sales may be the sign of a market turnaround. The relatively low drop in prices for the month also fuels this prediction, falling only 1.5% from May. For more on this continue reading the following article from The Street.
Miami-area June home sales climbed above the year-ago level for the seventh consecutive month, suggesting this year’s lower prices have helped offset the loss of the homebuyer tax credits that boosted demand in the first half of 2010.
The median sale price dipped slightly month to month and fell 10 percent from June 2010, marking the 45th consecutive month in which the median has fallen year over year, a real estate information service reported.
In June, 9,857 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in the metro area encompassing Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward counties. June sales rose 1.4 percent from the prior month and rose 6.0 percent from a year earlier, according to San Diego-based DataQuick. The firm tracks real estate trends nationally via public property records.
On average, sales have risen 6.7 percent between May and June since 1997, when DataQuick’s complete Miami-area statistics begin.
Claim up to $26,000 per W2 Employee
- Billions of dollars in funding available
- Funds are available to U.S. Businesses NOW
- This is not a loan. These tax credits do not need to be repaid
June’s total sales were the highest for that month since June 2007 (when 10,136 homes sold) but fell 20.7 percent below the average June sales tally of 12,427 since 1997.
The 4,911 condos that resold last month marked a 2.2 percent decrease from May but a 12.7 percent increase from a year earlier. It was the highest number of condo resales in the month of June since 2005, when 6,070 condos resold. Condo resales made up a near-record 49.8 percent of total Miami-area home sales last month, compared with 46.8 percent a year earlier and a monthly average of 34.7 percent over the past decade.
New-home sales continued to suffer last month as builders struggled with the weak economy and competition from distressed sales. June’s 526 closed escrows for newly built homes, which rose 1.5 percent from May and fell 9.0 percent from a year earlier, marked the lowest new-home tally on record for June. Last month’s new-home sales made up just 5.3 percent of all transactions — close to an all-time low and far below the new-home market’s decade-long average of 19.0 percent of total monthly sales.
In the Miami region’s multi-million-dollar luxury market, 103 houses and condos sold for $2 million or more last month, up 21.2 percent from May and up 27.2 percent from a year earlier. During the first six months of this year, 439 homes sold for $2 million or more, up 13.4 percent from the same period last year. The figures are based on public property records, where either a price or loan amount was available.
Foreign buyers purchased roughly 6.5 percent of all homes sold in the Miami region last month, based on a review of public property records where foreign addresses were available. Of the foreign buyers that could be identified, about 76 percent had mailing addresses in Canada. Argentina was the next-most-common country, representing about 3.1 percent of the buyers with a foreign address, followed by Venezuela (2 percent of foreign buyers), Finland (1.6 percent) and Brazil (1.4 percent).
The median price paid for all new and resale houses and condos sold in the Miami region in June was $135,000, down 1.5 percent from May and down 10.0 percent from a year earlier.
There were signs that prices in some market segments might be in the early stages of stabilizing. For example, the median price paid for resale single-family detached houses, which stood at $174,000 in June, has risen month-to-month for the past three months, though last month it remained nearly 6 percent below the year-ago level. The median price paid per square foot for resale single-family houses, which was $99 in June, has also increased for three consecutive months, though in June it was still 8.3 percent lower than a year ago.
This article was republished with permission from The Street.
