Housing sales show increase

According to new statistics released by U.S. Census Bureau News and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, new single-family house sales increased 4.4 percent nationally in the month of November.

“Housing indicators for the third quarter of 2012 continue to portray a fragile, but steady, recovery in the housing market,” members of the department said.

The seasonally-adjusted rate nationally for the month of November was 377,000 houses sold, surpassing not only the estimated October rate of 361,000 homes but also creating a 15.3 percent increase in house sales from Nov. 2011.

Sales shot up in the quickest fashion seen over the past 2-and-a-half years and a large increase in median sale price can be seen comparing today to a year ago, Jason Lange reported in his story for Reuters.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development also reported that the median sale price of new houses sold in November was $245,200, which according to Lange, is a 14.9 percent increase from Nov. 2011.

“The annual sales pace for November was the quickest since April 2010,” Lange said.

The United States housing economy appears to be getting better, but when broken down regionally the stats look a little different.

Though the nation is seeing a jump in sales from the month of October to November some economies, such as Sidney’s might not see much of a change at all.

According to reports from Mortgage News Daily’s market data center,in the Midwest new home sales decreased by 12.5 percent from the month of October to November. The only other region that saw a decrease within this time period was the Western region of the United States at a 17.8 percent decrease.

Regarding existing home sales however the Midwest was the region with the second highest increase from Oct. to Nov. this year. Behind the Southern region of the United States, the Midwest had a gain in existing home sales of 7.2 percent.

When focusing on the Great Plains area, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said that with combining new and existing home sales there was an overall increase however.

“The housing market conditions improved in every state in the Great Plains region during the past year,” members of the department said.

According to Hanley Wood, LLC, the number of homes sold increased by almost 8 percent in the Great Plains region over the third quarter.

One Sidney area realtor believes that the market has stayed rather stable in Sidney and will only go up from here.

He said that a lot of homes are still being sold and a majority of them to Cabela’s transferees or employees.

“Cabela’s is a major force and a significant player in the real estate market here,” he said. “We have really not seen the significant decline in value that some of the other areas of the country have because of Cabela’s.”

He said that the market was on the slower side up until 2007 when it came alive and buzzing. There was a very short supply of homes left available.

“The market kind of then took a backward stretch because the national economy in ’08 and ‘09,” he said.

Market recovery started in 2010 and got better over the course of 2011, he said.

“I think for all realtors this was a very good year, especially compared to when we were headed in a tough market direction,” he said.

The local realtor said that he believes the new home sale situation is due to the nation awakening from the economic slump of 2008.

“A lot of builders in ’08 after the big boom couldn’t pay the bills, went out of business or went bankrupt. So I think that you find a lot of builders are not really too aggressive again just yet,” he said.

With discussion of the East Sidney Expansion project, the local realtor said that the idea of building the potential 800 or more new homes would probably turn-off a lot of builders that would normally take on only one or two homes at a time.

“We need homes that are reasonably affordable. Part of the negative that we have in our area is property tax is on the high side,” he said. “Our real estate tax is large compared to our sister states, Wyoming and Colorado. Wyoming has about a third of Nebraska’s tax and Colorado has about half.”

The realtor said that he felt the absence of Cabela’s would be extremelydevastating to the market.

“It would be mind boggling bad. If Cabela’s goes so does our real estate market,” he said.

To keep up to date on trends in the housing market, new residential sales data for the month of December will be posted on Jan. 25 on the U.S. Department of Commerce website.