Metro Detroit home sales fall again — 5.2% in June

Charles Burges Business Information July 10, 2011 0

Metro Detroit’s residential real estate market continued to show signs of struggle for the first six months of the year including June, according to a Monday report from Realcomp II Ltd., a Farmington Hills-based real estate information company.

Sales of homes and condominiums last month slipped 5.2 percent to 4,931 total units in Oakland, Wayne, Livingston and Macomb counties compared with 5,201 units in June 2010.

For the first six months of the year, sales declined 4.2 percent, according to Realcomp.

All four counties saw sales declines in June, and only Macomb County experienced a sales increase in the six-month period.

Realtor Seth Meyers of Re/Max Metropolitan in Utica said he isn’t surprised that sales were down compared with June 2010 because that was the last month that the federal first-time home buyer tax credit was in effect.

“Considering that the sales for this June only slipped 5.2 percent from last year when you had the influx of all the sales from the tax credit pulled into June of last yearis pretty darn good,” he said.

The median price in the four-county region also slumped to $65,000 in June from $75,000 one year ago, which is a 13.3 percent decline, Realcomp said. Livingston was the only county to buck the trend, with the median price increasing 5.4 percent to $147,500. Wayne County’s price dropped 23 percent to $34,808.

The inventory also continued its slide — to 23,315 houses and condominiums, an 18.2 percent drop. In the past few months, Realcomp CEO Karen Kage and real estate agents have blamed the lack of available homes for the lackluster market.

It is a reversal from the past four years, when the housing crash that began in 2007 flooded the market with houses.

Realcomp said pending sales — homes that have been sold but not closed — were up 7.8 percent for all of its listing areas. But it reported an increase in pending sales for May with no resulting increase in home sales in June.

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