From yesterday's Inqy:
Philadelphia area homes off 32% for quarter

By Alan J. Heavens
Inquirer Real Estate Writer
Existing-home sales in the region and nation continued their decline in the first quarter of 2008, although the Philadelphia area continued to fare better than most other parts of the country.
Sales in the eight-county region fell 32 percent for the quarter, according to Prudential Fox & Roach's HomExpert, which is based on data from the Trend Multiple Listing Service.
Median prices overall fell 0.5 percent in the combined counties of Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, Delaware and Philadelphia. In Burlington, Camden and Gloucester Counties, prices dropped 2.4 percent combined.
Existing-home sales nationally fell 22 percent in the first quarter from the same period in 2007, the National Association of Realtors reported.
The median national existing single-family home price was $196,300, down 7.7 percent from the first quarter of 2007 median of $212,600, the NAR reported.
When calculating median price regionally, HomExpert includes New Castle and Kent Counties in Delaware and Mercer and Salem Counties in New Jersey because Prudential Fox & Roach handles house sales in those areas.
For the 12 counties HomExpert covered, median prices fell 1.4 percent in the first quarter from the same period in 2007.
The NAR's calculations for the region, also based on MLS data, put the year-over-year loss at just 0.7 percent. The NAR includes Delaware's New Castle, Kent and Sussex Counties and Salem but not Mercer in its calculations.
"The national housing market shows no sign of a bottom," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com in West Chester. "Sales, construction and prices are falling in most places across the country."
Commerce Bancorp Inc. chief economist Joel F. Naroff said: "Everything considered," the numbers here are not horrible, "given what is going on in other areas."
City sales were down 29.9 percent, HomExpert reported, but prices were 1.5 percent higher. The NAR and HomExpert numbers include single-family houses, as well as existing condos and co-ops.
In his analysis of city transactions, Wharton economist Kevin Gillen said prices in Philadelphia had fallen 8 percent in the nine months since spring 2007. The "value" of city single-family houses declined 2.7 percent.
Gillen said the 8 percent drop in nine months was twice the rate at which house prices fell during Philadelphia's last housing downturn (in the early 1990s), erases 2007 gains, and "effectively resets citywide home values to mid-2006."
Gillen uses just single-family homes and not condos. His data are transactions from the Philadelphia Recorder of Deeds, collected by hallwatch. com.
Inventory was flat at 11,000, but days on market rose to an average of 77 from 60 in the fall, Gillen said.
Gillen did say that his 8 percent, nine-month price drop is much smaller than the recent Case-Shiller Index, which shows house prices down an average 14 percent from their peak in the 10 largest U.S. cities.
Case-Shiller does not include Philadelphia. "The Philadelphia market is one of the best big-city housing markets in the country," Zandi said. "Everything is soft, but conditions are not crumbling."