Arkansas home sales rose about 9 percent in January as the average price fell about 4 percent, the Arkansas Realtors Association said Wednesday.
The total number of homes sold in January, 1,831, was the most for the month since 1,928 homes were sold in 2007.
Benton County recorded 328 home sales, the most of any county in the state, the association said. Pulaski County was close behind with 321 homes sold in January.
January is typically the slowest month of the year for home sales, said Michael Pakko, chief economist for the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
"In the past four or five years, [January sales have] served as a fairly good harbinger of how [sales] will be for the year," Pakko said. "Since 2013, there has been a clear upward trend in the January low point that has carried through for the rest of the year."
A mild Arkansas winter likely helped home sales in January, Pakko said.
Kathy Deck, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, agreed that January was a good month for home sales.
"We're continuing to see the housing market improve seasonally and steadily," Deck said.
The average prices were "all over the place," Deck said.
The average sales price in the state was low, Deck said, about $139,400, which was down from about $144,800 in January last year. But among the most active counties in the state, prices ranged from about $125,000 in Baxter and Marion counties, which are reported together, to almost $190,000 in Benton County.
Several counties had double-digit increases in average prices, Deck noted.
"But it's not surprising to see price volatility in a month that has a low number of sales," Deck said.
Nationally, new-home sales rose 2 percent in February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 512,000, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. All of the increase came from a 38.5 percent surge in purchases in the West, which reversed a stiff 32.7 percent decline in January that had cut into overall sales.
The rebound likely reflected a government report that can be extremely volatile on a monthly basis, clouding some views of where the construction and housing markets are heading at the start of the most intense months for home sales.
"At this stage, it is unclear whether new-home sales are plateauing or are still in an uptrend," said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at MFR, a forecasting firm.
Sales of previously owned homes nationally dropped more than forecast in February.
Closings on previously owned homes, which usually take place after a contract is signed, fell 7.1 percent in February to an annual rate of 5.08 million homes, a three-month low, the National Association of Realtors said earlier this week. The sales were weaker than the most pessimistic forecast by economists in a Bloomberg survey.
The monthly report of home sales in Arkansas includes sales by Realtors of newly constructed homes as well as previously owned homes. The report includes sales in 43 counties, primarily the larger counties in the state.
Pakko predicted in his annual forecast last year of the state's economy that there would be double-digit growth in home sales in 2016.
"I think there is still room for expansion," Pakko said. "The continued low interest rate environment will help support home sales later in the year when people start thinking that interest rates may be rising soon."
The typical rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage nationally was 3.72 percent Wednesday, according to bankrate.com. A typical rate for a 15-year fixed rate was 2.80 percent, bankrate.com said.
Business on 03/24/2016