Patience is a virtue for home sellers
Area home prices continued to inch upward during the first half of this year and experts say the region has been successfully weathering a national real estate slowdown.
The first six months of 2007 saw the median home price in Bucks County climb 4.6 percent over last year, while the number of sales fell 5.4 percent, according to the Prudential Fox & Roach Realtors‘ HomExpert Market Report. The number of homes on the market grew, and number of days that homes stayed on the market increased from 49 to 64.
Doylestown Realtor Flo Smerconish said that houses were still moving at the right price.
“A buyer today has a lot of choices,” she said, adding that patient sellers were still doing well.
“In Doylestown there are some pretty unique houses,” Smerconish said. For example, a federal-style brick home costing around $600,000 sold in about four months, after the price was cut 5 percent, she said.
Smerconish said the price reduction is not uncommon.
“Naturally there’s been a price adjustment on a lot of the real estate that’s been on the market.”
Still, with good schools, low unemployment and a seemingly unending line of pharmaceutical employees transferring into the area, Smerconish and other Realtors said the housing market is not in bad shape.
“I think it’s obvious in terms of the sale pricing that there are little pockets that are up and little pockets that are down, but overall it’s been very stable,” said Sue Thompson, vice president and sales manager at the Doylestown office of Prudential, Fox & Roach Realtors.