Home sales slide slows in Lynchburg

The prospects of getting a home sold in the Lynchburg area improved in the late summer, according to recent data.

Although the number of homes sold in 2009 still lags behind 2008, the number of sales has improved each month this year, said Lynchburg Association of Realtors President Betty Kain.

She said the market is improving with the help of the $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers. Also, as inventory clears in the market, buyers are making decisions more quickly, she said.

However, sellers need to be more willing to cut their asking prices to speed the market’s recovery, she said.

In the third quarter, 580 existing homes sold in the Lynchburg area. That was a 2.4 percent drop from the 594 sales in the third quarter of 2008, according to data released Friday from the Virginia Association of Realtors.

The 2.4 percent drop is the smallest decrease the Lynchburg area has seen recently. In every other quarter since early 2008, home sales have measured at least 17 percent below sales of a year before. That shows that the number of sales has not dropped as much in the past 12 months as it did in the 12 months before that.

The median price in the third quarter was $152,955 in the Lynchburg area, a 2.5 percent drop from the third quarter of 2008.

Kain said the Lynchburg housing market has shown month-to-month improvements, which could mean the market has stabilized and turned. “Our sales have gone up over the year, from month to month. We’re pleased with that,” she said.

In September, the region had closings on 190 existing home sales, with a median price of about $145,000, compared to 156 sales with a median price of about $140,000 a year earlier, Kain said.

Across the state in the third quarter, the number of homes sold dropped 1 percent and the median price dropped 1.3 percent from the third quarter of 2008. Compared with much sharper decreases in earlier quarters, it was good news for real estate agents and analysts who spoke in a conference call that the Virginia Association of Realtors sponsored Friday.

“If you are a seller who needs to sell, it’s a much better time to do it now than it was a year ago,” said Rosemary deButts, a housing and economics consultant, who spoke in the conference call. “The market is improving.”

“To me, the market has turned,” said John McClain, a senior fellow in George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis who spoke in the conference call. “We’ve seen increases in Northern Virginia and we’re going to see price increases in other areas.”

McClain said that different areas of the state are at different points in the cycle and will recover at different times. “Seeing prices stabilize is the turning point,” he said.

Kain said that for the Lynchburg-area market to continue improving, sellers still need to lower their asking prices.

“We are not in our 2006, 2007 market. This is a totally different market,” Kain said. “You can’t price your home for what you paid for it then. You have to price it for what the market will bear now.”