Housing Trends

==Pittsburgh housing sales plummet==
:March 13, 2008 Pittsburgh Business Times - by Ben Semmes bsemmes@bizjournals.com, (412) 208-3829
Pittsburgh's residential real estate market continued to sputter in February, with Allegheny County posting a 16.4 percent drop in sales from the same month last year.
Just 896 residential properties -- including houses and condos -- sold in Allegheny County in February 2008, down from 896 in February 2007, according to the report issued Thursday by RealSTATs, a real estate information company based on Pittsburgh's South Side.
The five-county Pittsburgh area showed a net decline in sales of 11.4 percent from February 2007 to February 2008. That isn't as bad as last month's trend, when the decline was 18.4 percent.
Residential sales dollar volume dropped 7.5 percent year over year for the five-county region, led by Allegheny County with a decline of $12.3 million.
Washington County was the only area to post a positive sales volume in February, $3.4 million, although its total number of sales, 152, remained unchanged over the same month last year.
Still, the average home price in Allegheny County rose 9 percent, from $128,704, to $140,241, in February over the same month last year.
"It's a consistent paradox of good news and bad news that's difficult to explain," said Daniel Murrer, vice president of RealSTATs. "Despite the drop in sales activity, the prices of homes that are selling, continue to increase. Yet, more houses are sitting longer on the market."
===Related News===
* Local foreclosures down from last year [Pittsburgh]
* Number of home sales, average price fall in December from year ago [Pittsburgh]
* Home sales drop from last year, but prices rise [Pittsburgh]
==Links==
* Trends
* Housing
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