Sellers cut prices on 28% of R.I. homes

PROVIDENCE — The asking prices had been cut on 28 percent of homes on the market in Rhode Island as of Dec. 1, according to a report released Wednesday by Trulia.com, a Web-based real estate service.

The average home price was reduced by 11 percent, Trulia said. The price cuts represented a combined reduction of $84.67 million.

The numbers were similar for Providence County, where Trulia reported an average price reduction of 10 percent across 29 percent of listings. Boston ranked third in the volume of discounts (35 percent of all listings), behind Minneapolis (40 percent) and Jacksonville (37 percent).

Nationally, the company said 22 percent of houses on the market as of Dec. 1 had been lowered in price, compared with 25.6 percent a month earlier. The average discount rose to 11 percent from 10 percent.

Trulia said there were fewer price reductions on less expensive homes but luxury homes continued to see heavy cuts.

“We are now seeing fewer reductions at the low end of the market as those sellers are increasingly in sync with market prices,” Trulia CEO Pete Flint said in a statement.

“With the expansion of the tax credit to repeat home buyers and extension to April 30, we expect to see an increase in price reductions at the higher end of the market in the first quarter of 2010,” Flint added.

Additional information is available at trulia.com.