Local home sales reach record high for quarter
Median price at $134,000; average 108 days to sell
Friday, April 08, 2005
Sales of single-family homes reached a record high in Huntsville and Madison County in the year's first quarter.
A total of 1,175 single-family homes were sold during January, February and March, according to data from the Multiple Listing Service at the Huntsville Area Association of Realtors Inc. That's a 21 percent increase over the number sold during the same period in 2004.
The median sales price for the first quarter of 2005 was $134,000, compared with a median of $125,000 during the same period in 2004.
The first quarter tends to be the slowest time of the year for housing sales, and "generally activity will pick up in the spring," said Cliff Mann, president of the Huntsville Area Association of Realtors. Part of the reason for the record could be "the anticipation of mortgage rates going up this year," he said.
Randy McKinney, the president of the Alabama Association of Realtors, said the real estate market continues to be strong across Alabama. Real estate "has been one of the strongest segments of the economy over the last several years."
The Huntsville association's figures also showed that homes sold a little more quickly - an average of 108 days on the market in the first-quarter of 2005 compared with 115 days in the same period in 2004.
Figures show that the Huntsville area's Housing Affordability Index, which measures whether a typical family can qualify for a mortgage loan, remains high. The index for the fourth quarter of 2004 was 217.2, according to the Alabama Real Estate Research and Education Center at the University of Alabama. That is well above the statewide average of 179.2 and the U.S. average of 129.5 for the same period.
An index value of 100 means that a family that earns the median income in a geographic area has exactly enough income to qualify for a mortgage loan on a median-priced home.
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