As if the unending number of unsold homes in my neighborhood, and Northern Virginia in general didn’t confirm it, data released today shows that housing prices are still falling:
Home prices continued to slide in October as the supply of unsold homes grew. The new statistics are the latest to suggest that the once-booming housing market is continuing to deflate.
The fall in the median price of a previously owned home ? down 3.5 percent from a year earlier, to $221,000 ? was the sharpest on record.
Falling prices helped provide a slight lift in the volume of sales for the month, which was 0.5 percent higher than in September. But compared with a year ago, sales of previously owned homes remain down by double-digit percentages, the National Association of Realtors said.
Given the fact that the real estate market in many parts of the country was obscenely inflated before the bubble burst, this isn’t a surprise. Nonetheless, it’s not exactly a good time to be a seller right now.
