is for sale.
According to the Rhode Island Association of Realtors, the state’s median existing home-sales price was $144,300 in October, up 15.4 percent from October 1999 when the median sales price was $125,000. This high median sales price is caused, in part, by the fact that a larger portion of expensive homes are being sold.
Estelle Smith, CRS, GRI, president of the Rhode Island Association of Realtors and broker/co-owner of Benchmark Associates, Inc., of Middletown, said many people who planned to purchase a home did so, because of the lower cost of financing.
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“First-time buyers are more sensitive to higher interest rates,” she said. “With a sustained level of lower mortgage rates, more first-time buyers will be able to afford homes later this year. Lower interest rates mean more people who are at the margins of qualifying for a loan are being included in the market.”
Compared to October of 1999, single-family home sales last month dropped five percent. Despite the deceleration, this year remains the second busiest in Rhode Island’s history according to the Realtors Association. Projected annual Rhode Island sales are expected to fall in behind last year’s all-time record 9,659 single-family home re-sales but should remain ahead of the 8,937 recorded during the twelve months of 1998.
One sector of the market that has not seen any sort of sales fallout is the high-end home market. Consumer confidence in this category remains very strong. The average price of an existing single-family home sold in Rhode Island rose to a record high during the month of October. Despite the slightly lower number of unit sales, the collective dollar volume was six percent higher than October 1999. Driving gross sales up was the nearly 17 percent upswing in the monthly average sales price for an existing single-family home from $163,074 in 1999 to a record high $189,944 in 2000. This was largely a result of the increased percentage of higher-end homes coming into the sales mix.
“The current real estate market is a seller’s dream,” said Smith. “As the number of houses available is limited, demand is high and property is selling faster than it has in over a decade. If a homeowner is contemplating selling his or her home, the time is now.”
According to State-Wide Multiple Listing Service (MLS) subsidiary of the Rhode Island Realtors, there are currently about 2,500 Rhode Island single-family homes on the market. This represents a 21 percent decline in inventory from a year ago and a 48 percent inventory drop from what was available at this time in1998.
The average time it took to get a commitment from a buyer once a home was put on the market more commonly known as Days on the Market — in October was 59 days. That’s 34 percent faster than they were selling in October of 1999 and 42 percent faster than they were selling during the same month in 1998. According to State-Wide MLS, homes are currently selling faster this year than they have since 1986 when the days on the market was also 59.
