Atascocita Observer - News
Hurricane Ike slowed down housing sales in September
By RYAN HICKMAN
Hurricane Ike’s destruction last month reached into the housing market as the storm’s disruption kept homes from selling with single-family home sales sliding more than 30 percent when compared to the same time last year, according to the Houston Association of Realtors.
“Hurricane Ike effectively shut Houston’s real estate business down for half of September,” Michael Levitin, HAR chairman and principal of HTownRealty.com said in press release this week.
“Like other businesses, real estate agencies lost anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks due to power outages and damage caused by the storm, and thousands of property transactions were postponed so that sellers could make repairs. Ike did, however, help accelerate transactions involving rental properties as many people sought short-term housing.”
The Houston-wide decline continued locally with the The Observer coverage areas of Atascocita, East Montgomery County, Humble and Kingwood all posting slowdowns in single-family homes sales in September ’08 when compared to the same month last year. HAR data did show that home values stayed positive for the most part.
In Atascocita, home sales slipped more than 12 percent this September, the Kingwood area saw at 22 percent drop year over year while East Montgomery County’s home sales fell off more than 23 percent last month and the Humble area saw a small up tick in sales of just over 1 percent.
All four areas had home prices stay steady with minor increases in Atascocita (0.3 percent), Humble (2 percent) and Kingwood (0.2 percent) but a small drop in East Montgomery County (0.2 percent), according to HAR’s statistics.
The average price of homes sold in Atascocita was $166,360 this September, $141,452 in East Montgomery County, $148,014 in Humble and $194,331 in Kingwood, numbers broken down by HAR indicate.
WEB LINK
www.har.com
“Hurricane Ike effectively shut Houston’s real estate business down for half of September,” Michael Levitin, HAR chairman and principal of HTownRealty.com said in press release this week.
“Like other businesses, real estate agencies lost anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks due to power outages and damage caused by the storm, and thousands of property transactions were postponed so that sellers could make repairs. Ike did, however, help accelerate transactions involving rental properties as many people sought short-term housing.”
The Houston-wide decline continued locally with the The Observer coverage areas of Atascocita, East Montgomery County, Humble and Kingwood all posting slowdowns in single-family homes sales in September ’08 when compared to the same month last year. HAR data did show that home values stayed positive for the most part.
In Atascocita, home sales slipped more than 12 percent this September, the Kingwood area saw at 22 percent drop year over year while East Montgomery County’s home sales fell off more than 23 percent last month and the Humble area saw a small up tick in sales of just over 1 percent.
All four areas had home prices stay steady with minor increases in Atascocita (0.3 percent), Humble (2 percent) and Kingwood (0.2 percent) but a small drop in East Montgomery County (0.2 percent), according to HAR’s statistics.
The average price of homes sold in Atascocita was $166,360 this September, $141,452 in East Montgomery County, $148,014 in Humble and $194,331 in Kingwood, numbers broken down by HAR indicate.
WEB LINK
www.har.com
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