The Iowa Association of Realtors has released complete housing stats for the month of August 2009. Iowa and Des Moines unfortunately bucked positive national trends to post declines in average prices, but posted slight gains in volume(good!), but also in days on market(not good!). Here's a summary:

Unit sales 08/08-08/09: +1.2% From 814 in 08' to 824 in 09'

Average Price 08/08-08/09: -10.1% From 179,053 in 08' to 160,918 in 09'

Days on Market 08/08-08/09: +3.0% From 101 min 08' to 104 in 09'.

With the all the activity occuring with the pending expiration of the first time home buyer tax credit I would have guessed a greater rise in unit sales but the numbers did not bear that out. I wasn't really surprised but the drop in prices however as the inventory foreclosed homes and short sales continues to be robust in the face of Iowa's continued climb in unemployment numbers to 6.8%.

Said Elisabeth Buck, director of Iowa Workforce Development. ".... the state's unemployment rate is likely to remain high into 2010, despite an optimistic forecast of improving conditions in the second half of this year." Somebody should inform Elisabeth that this is the second hald of the year and we're experiencing the third consecutive month of increases in the unemployment rate (and business closures), thereby triggering the federal goverment to extend jobless benefits to Iowa's unemployed by 13 weeks.

Housing data courtesy of Iowa Association of Realtors