Luxury Home Market Surges During 2013

Luxury Home Market Surges During 2013 - Scottsdale Real Estate Arizona

Two important home sales benchmarks include all sales and the luxury home market surge during 2013. review our graph and then take a look at the remarkable market price increases for the entire market that follows.

December Existing-Home Sales Rise, 2013 Strongest in Seven Years

Existing-home sales edged up in December, sales for all of 2013 were the highest since 2006, and median prices maintained strong growth, according to the National Association of Realtors®.

For all of 2013, there were 5.09 million sales, which is 9.1 percent higher than 2012. It was the strongest performance since 2006 when sales reached an unsustainably high 6.48 million at the close of the housing boom.

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said housing has experienced a healthy recovery over the past two years. “Existing-home sales have risen nearly 20 percent since 2011, with job growth, record low mortgage interest rates and a large pent-up demand driving the market,” he said. “We lost some momentum toward the end of 2013 from disappointing job growth and limited inventory, but we ended with a year that was close to normal given the size of our population.” The national median existing-home price for all of 2013 was $197,100, which is 11.5 percent above the 2012 median of $176,800, and was the strongest gain since 2005 when it rose 12.4 percent.

The median existing-home price for all housing types in December was $198,000, up 9.9 percent from December 2012. The shrinking share of distressed sales accounts for some of the price growth.

Total housing inventory at the end of December fell 9.3 percent to 1.86 million existing homes available for sale, which represents a 4.6-month supply at the current sales pace, down from 5.1 months in November. Unsold inventory is 1.6 percent above a year ago, when there was a 4.5-month supply.

The median time on market for all homes was 72 days in December, up sharply from 56 days in November, but slightly below the 73 days on market in December 2012. Adverse weather reportedly delayed closings in many areas. Twenty-eight percent of homes sold in December were on the market for less than a month, down from 35 percent in November, which appears to be a weather impact. All-cash sales comprised 32 percent of transactions in December, unchanged from November; they were 29 percent in December 2012.

Single-family home sales rose Nationally 1.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.30 million in December. The median existing single-family home price was $197,900 in December, up 9.8 percent from a year ago.

Existing-home sales in the West rose 4.8 percent to a pace of 1.09 million in December, but are 10.7 percent below a year ago. Inventory is tightest in the West, which is holding down sales in many markets, and multiple bidding is causing it to experience the strongest price gains in the U.S. The median price in the West was $285,000, up 16.0 percent from December 2012.

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