Home Sales Dip In Benton, Washington Counties After Cold Stretch

Spring may have officially started March 20, but Northwest Arkansas real estate agents are still waiting for prolonged stretches of warm weather.

Home sales dipped last month, and many people in the real estate industry blame cold and snowy weather.

By The Numbers (w/logo)

Northwest Arkansas Home Sales

The recorded home sales in Benton and Washington counties in March over the past three years.

Year * Value Of Homes * Units * Median Price

2012 * $88.8 million * 545 * $138,000

2013 * $110 million * 618 * $145,000

2014 * $103.9 million * 577 * $145,800

Source: MountData

"Six months of snow has affected everything," said David Simpson, executive broker for Re/Max Associates. "My sales are about $20,000 less than last year."

MountData, a real estate marketing firm, reports agents sold 577 homes in Benton and Washington counties last month compared with 618 in March 2013. Sales are slightly down through the first three months of the year.

Paul Bynum, MountData owner and principal broker, said the slight drop wasn't surprising because the number of pending sales in February was down.

"At this point I am blaming the weather," he said. "The extreme weather this winter kept buyers from looking at homes."

There are more sales pending this March than a year earlier, with 654 compared with 642, but Bynum said April sales might still fall short of last year's mark.

"We are still on track to have a good year," he said. "The market, at least now, is in a good, stable stage."

Despite sales through the first three months running slightly below 2013 levels, the value of this year's sales is a bit higher, thanks to a higher median sales price.

Single-home sales totaled $250.4 million through March compared with $248.1 million in the same three months last year. The median sales price increased to $145,800 from $145,000.

JP Sexton, vice president of mortgage lending at Centennial Bank in Northwest Arkansas, said mortgage business is picking up after a slow winter.

"I think it will be as good as last year, and I'm hoping it will be even better," he said.

Home sales totaled $1.32 billion last year and was the area's third-best year ever. The market peaked at $1.4 billion in 2005.

Sexton said there are good financing programs to assist potential buyers, including a program the Arkansas Development Finance Authority started Tuesday.

Murray Harding, the authority's single-family program manager, said the Housing Finance Agency's Preferred 97 is a conventional loan program, meaning it isn't federally funded.

Harding said this is the agency's first conventional loan program in about eight years. The loan program requires a 3 percent down payment, and he said the authority also has programs to help potential homeowners hit that 3 percent.

"Generally, our program has only been for first-time home buyers, but midyear last year we did away with that requirement," he said.

The Preferred 97 program also requires a minimum credit score of 680 and a maximum of 45 percent debt-to-income ratio. The program also has income limit of $69,840 for households with one or two people and $81,480 for households with more than three people.

The state program can be a good alternative for federal programs, such as Rural Development or Federal Housing Administration, because of a shrinking number of eligible areas and new regulations, he said.

"There are a lot of exciting things going on," Sexton said.

NW News on 04/16/2014

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