Home sales for May up from ’08
Realtors optimistic across United States

Home sales in Lake Havasu City continued to improve in the month of May.

The real estate market saw a slight increase from May 2008 in the number of homes sold, but remained stabilized from this past April. In May, the Lake Havasu Association of Realtors reported 154 homes sold. That number is slightly higher than May 2008, when 142 homes sold, but equals the statistics from April of this year.

Association of realtors President Pat Landry said at a recent trip to Washington, D.C., for the National Association of Realtors those in attendance seemed pretty optimistic, as have local realtors. Landry said she expects things may be back to normal in 2011, so now is still the best time for people to buy, especially considering the $8,000 tax credit offered by the federal government, which Landry says buyers might be able to apply to their down payment in the near future.

This comes at a time when the price of homes is very affordable, Landry says. While more homes are being sold, the median price of those homes remains considerably less than last year.

The median sales price for residential homes continued to rise in May, though. With foreclosed homes still being the majority those sold, the median sales price was around $152,750, an increase of approximately $3,800 from April. However, the median sales price continued to drop from this time last year. Home sales averaged around $207,750 in May 2008, a difference of $55,000.

Lake Havasu City is seeing a reduced number of homes on the market. In April 1,022 homes were for sale in the city. As of May, the number of homes for sale was 969.

One area Landry said she is concerned about is short sale homes. Landry said she believes the banks should be looking into more short sales, instead of letting homes go into foreclosures. While a majority of homes sold in Lake Havasu City are foreclosures, 74 to be exact, Landry says more money could be made per home on short sales.

“If these banks would hurry up (with closing homes), they’d make more money,” she said.

Lake Havasu City currently has 96 active foreclosure listings and 101 pending escrow. Along with those figures, the city has 76 short sale homes. Eight short sale homes sold last month.

Landry said one of the problems many of her clients have found is banks are outsourcing the companies who are processing home sales to other countries. To her, she said, this doesn’t make sense; especially with the number of Americans they could employ to do the job. She said one client of hers reported being on the phone with someone he or she did not understand for more than 1 ? hours.

As the summer progresses Landry says she believes things would pick up even more. She said the reason sales have risen and then leveled off is because of the snowbirds buying before they left for the season. Now, with more and more boaters coming in for the summer season the next two months, things should improve, she said.

You may contact the reporter at twaggoner@havasunews.com.

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