By Kevin Shalvey
PBN Staff Writer
BOSTON – For 10 consecutive months in 2007, single-family home sales in Rhode Island fell, ending with December sales figures that were the lowest the state has seen since before 2005, according to year-end statistics released today by The Warren Group, a Boston-based real estate tracker.
December single-family home sales dropped 23.6 percent year-over-year to 571 last from 747 during the last month of 2006. But that wasn’t the largest percentage drop during 2007 – during September, home sales fell 27 percent.
For the year, home sales in the Ocean State fell 11.2 percent to 8,636 from 9,724.
“Rhode Island’s home sales have fallen more than those in Massachusetts,” where sales fell 8.4 percent compared with 2006, “but the good news is that the Ocean State’s median price doesn’t seem to be falling at such a dramatic rate,” CEO Timothy Warren Jr. said in a statement today.
The median price of single-family homes sold in Rhode Island last year fell 4.7 percent to $254,000, from $266,500 during 2006. During December, the median price fell 11.9 percent to $225,000.
“But we have to watch the market in the first quarter of this year,” Warren said. “December was the second-worst month in 2007, after September, for single-family home sales in Rhode Island, so there could be more bad news in the coming months.”
Condominium sales also fell 6.8 percent during 2007, dropping to 2,352 from 2,524 during 2006, as the median price fell less than 1 percent to $225,000.
Year-over-year, December sales were down 17 percent to 156. However, the median price paid increased 11.2 percent in December to $244,750, higher than the median single-family home price.
The Warren Group Inc. is a provider of New England real estate data and the publisher of Banker & Tradesman and other journals. Additional information is available at www.thewarrengroup.com.
