Home Sales Slightly Up

MEDIAN PRICE INCREASES ON NEW, EXISTING HOUSES

Travis Bounds with Builders Stone & Supply builds a fire in an outdoor fireplace outside the Northwest Arkansas Convention Center in Springdale on Friday, Feb. 14, 2014, during the Northwest Arkansas Home Builders Association Home Show. The show continues through Sunday at the center.
Travis Bounds with Builders Stone & Supply builds a fire in an outdoor fireplace outside the Northwest Arkansas Convention Center in Springdale on Friday, Feb. 14, 2014, during the Northwest Arkansas Home Builders Association Home Show. The show continues through Sunday at the center.

Area home sales started the new year slightly ahead of 2013.

Real estate agents sold 395 homes in January, up from 388 a year earlier, according to MountData, a real estate marketing fi rm.

“At this point, you have to expect sales will level off,” said Paul Bynum, the fi rm’s owner and principal broker. “It’s still nice that sales are above last year.”

BY THE NUMBERS

REGIONAL HOME SALES

The recorded home sales in Benton and Washington counties in January during the past three years.

Year Value Of Homes Sold Units Median Home Price

2012 $54.07 million 341 $130,500 2013 $64.91 million 388 $139,950 2014 $66.22 million 395 $136,000

SOURCE: MOUNTDATA

The median price of total sales dropped slightly from $139,500 in January 2013 to $136,000 last month, but Bynum said that figure is misleading.

The median sales price increased from $125,000 to $126,000 for existing homes and from $195,000 to $224,000 on new construction.

The overall median price drop was caused by a change in the sales mix: more new homes sold in January 2013 than sold last month. New homes sales dropped 8 percent from 52 last year to 48 last month.

Realtor Camryn Newland is locked into the new home market. She sells new homes in Bentonville’s Central Park neighborhood for home builder Buft ngton Homes of Arkansas.

She has seven listings in Central Park, and said once homes are complete, they don’t stay on the market long. Prices start at $315,000.

“Last year was a great year. I sold 24 houses in the neighborhood,” Newland said. “We are running out of lots and inventory, so things are slowing down a little.”

The neighborhood is set to expand to the other side of Central Park Elementary School later this year and will spur a new round of sales activity, she said.

Kay Weiderhaft, mortgage market leader at Bank of Arkansas, said she expects home sales to continue growing into the new year.

“Bentonville is just exploding,” she said. “I think Northwest Arkansas is going to exceed growth in the rest of the nation.”

Bank of Arkansas is a branch of BOK Financial Corp., based in Tulsa, Okla., and has two Northwest Arkansas branches.

Weiderhaft said she sees a shortage of homes for sale under $250,000.

“We need inventory because we have a pool of buyers who don’t have homes to buy,” she said.

Bynum said there may be a shortage of homes of a certain price in a specific market, but numbers show the overall market is neutral. He said that means there are enough homes for the number of buyers and neither side has an advantage.

A neutral market should means prices won’t change a whole lot, Bynum said.

“What usually drives prices up in a normal market is infl ation and speculation,” he said.

The MountData report estimates there will be 878 buyers for 3,032 listed existing homes and 149 buyers for 391 newly constructed homes in the next three months. That equates to three homes for each buyer.

Bynum said he expects 2014 to be another good year for home sales, but said February sales might dip slightly.

“People don’t like to get out in the snow and look at homes,” he said. “It is purely seasonal.”

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