DC's April Home Sales Second Highest Since 2006

• May 10th 2011

by Mark Wellborn

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Last month, 5,170 home purchase contracts were signed in the DC area, the second highest total for April since 2006, according to data released today by RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI), the research arm of Metropolitan Regional Information Systems (MRIS). The April sales total was second only to April 2010 when sales were fueled by the federal home buyer tax credit.

While pending sales in April fell by 4.8 percent when compared to the heavy level of activity in March, the sales figures still represented the fourth highest monthly total in the past 45 months.

“There was a release from the lull of the market complacency from the second half of last year, a release of pent-up demand,” RBI analyst Jonathan Miller explained to UrbanTurf. “If you look at December, February and March, you can see a consistent rise in sales from the dearth of activity at the end of last year.”

Active inventory of homes for sale in the area dropped slightly compared to April 2011, but rose by about 4 percent compared to March. The year-over-year drop was due to a 20.6 percent decline in new listings entering the market, a stat that is largely due to the anomaly that was the tax credit.

“Last year at this time, there was an unnatural rise in new inventory coming on the market to meet the perceived surge in demand of buyers who wanted to take advantage of the tax credit,” Miller said. “When the tax credit was in full force, there was this inflated demand, and now we are back to a more normal market.”

The area that MRIS analyzes includes DC, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, Alexandria City, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Fairfax City, and Falls Church City.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.production.logicbrush.com/articles/blog/dcs_april_home_sales_second_highest_since_2006/3462.