Buyers who were brave enough to dive into the market for a bargain-priced house helped provide a modest boost to sales last month.
Sales of inexpensive foreclosures and other distressed low-end properties have even sparked bidding wars in places like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Miami. But the market for high-end properties is at a virtual standstill, mainly because it remains difficult to get a mortgage for expensive homes.
"We're looking at a dual market right now," said Sherry Chris, chief executive of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate.
The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that home sales rose 2.9 percent to an annual rate of 4.68 million in April from a downwardly revised pace of 4.55 million in March. Sales were 4.6 percent below April last year, without adjusting for seasonal factors.
Compared with January, the lowest point in the housing recession, April sales were up nearly 4 percent. But compared with the peak in September 2005, sales are still down 35 percent.
And they have not kept pace with foreclosures, which continue to pile up at an alarming pace. Those properties helped drag down the median sales price to $170,200.
Foreclosures and other distressed sales made up about 45 percent of all transactions in April, according to the Realtors group.
Nationally, the number of unsold homes on the market at the end of April rose almost 9 percent from a month earlier to nearly 4 million. That's a 10-month supply at the current sales pace, and was particularly troubling to economists.
The rise in unsold homes "suggests foreclosure activity may be adding homes to the market faster than sales are removing them," wrote David Resler, chief economist with Nomura Securities.
Another big problem is the lack of activity at the higher-end of the housing market. Lenders have tightened standards dramatically, especially for so-called "jumbo" loans above $730,000 that cannot be purchased by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the government-controlled mortgage companies.
The Houston, TX real estate market has a number of foreclosure properties currently available. To search foreclosures, click here.
