LITTLE ROCK — Home sales in Arkansas dropped 5.6 percent in August compared with August last year, the Arkansas Realtors Association said Wednesday.
There were 2,266 homes sold in the 43-county area covered by the association’s report, down from 2,401 homes sold in August last year.
Sales of new homes in the United States dipped slightly in August from July but the median price of homes sold during the month rose by a record amount, the Commerce Department said.
“Looking back at where we were a year ago, August was the peak month of 2011” in Arkansas, said Michael Pakko, chief economist at the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. “So the actual [5.6 percent] downturn in August may be an overstatement of the weakness in the market. Essentially, we’re running along at a fairly flat pace.”
In June, July and August, three months when home sales are historically high, sales were down 1.9 percent compared with the same months last year.
“We expect to see stronger sales in the summertime,” Pakko said. “It seems like home sales are grinding along in something of a rut. We’re not seeing a whole lot of activity, either up or down.”
Benton County had the most sales in August with 375, 14 more than Pulaski County. Washington County had 220 sales. Sales were up about 10 percent in Benton County, down about 1 percent in Pulaski County and up about 7 percent in Washington County.
Northwest Arkansas has been on a “job growth tear,” similar to the kind of job growth it saw in the boom times before the recession, said Kathy Deck, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
“And Benton County is the primary recipient of those jobs,” Deck said. “When we look at economic performance in the state, Benton County is really sticking out as a high performer. So the fact that its real estate market is reflecting that as well is not surprising.”
Home prices were up 17.3 percent in August to an average of almost $165,000, the association said.
Again, Northwest Arkansas reported some of the highest increases in prices, by almost 23 percent in Benton County and almost 27 percent in Washington County.
“Northwest Arkansas is not beset by supply problems,” Deck said. “There isn’t an oversupply of new construction out there. So there is room for home prices to modestly rise, as we have seen.”
The Realtors Association also released home sales for July on Wednesday. Sales were basically unchanged in July compared with July last year.
Home prices in July in the 43-county area, which includes the largest markets in the state, were up 13 percent compared with prices in July last year.
Typically, the number of sales starts to turn downward after August, so it seems unlikely that Arkansas will end the year with an increase in home sales, Pakko said. Through last month, sales totaled 16,211, down 2 percent from last year through eight months.
“But it still could turn out that we see some strengthening in the fourth quarter that would pull this year’s total above last year,” Pakko said. “I’m not discounting that possibility, but I’m not counting on it, either.”
New-home sales nationally edged down to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 373,000 in August, a dip of 0.3 percent from July’s revised rate of 374,000, The Associated Press reported.
Sales in August were up 27.7 percent from the pace a year ago. But even with that gain, new-home sales remain well below the annual pace of 700,000 that economists consider healthy.
The median price of a new home jumped 11.2 percent in August to $256,900, the biggest one-month gain on record.
The median sales price was up 17 percent compared with August 2011. The $256,900 median price in August was the highest sales price since new homes sold for $262,600 in March 2007, a period when prices were coming down from the peaks reached during the housing boom.
Robert Kavcic, an economist at BMO Capital Markets, told The Associated Press the August report was “more evidence that a recovery in U.S. housing is taking root.”
Business, Pages 25 on 09/27/2012