THUNDER BAY – US real estate prices are climbing. The news can impact soft market prices for softwood lumber in Canada and Northwestern Ontario. Higher prices are an economic indicator of demand exceeding supply. If the housing starts in the United States climb, the market for softwood lumber in Canada will increase.
Real estate brokerage Redfin (www.redfin.com) has released its Real-Time Home Price Tracker, posting gains in both prices and sales volume across 19 major U.S. markets in May.
Real Estate Inventory Down
While inventory was down year over year in May, it increased from the previous month. The easing of the inventory crunch likely contributed to home sales volume, which hit the highest level since 2010.
Home prices:
- May home prices increased 17% year over year, and rose 4% since April.
Sales volume:
- Home sales were up 14% from 2012, and 16% from April.
- More than 79,000 homes sales closed in the 19 markets covered in this report in May, the largest amount since January 2010.
Inventory:
- While down 22% from last year, inventory showed a monthly increase of 4.3%.
This report is the earliest monthly analysis of home prices, sales and inventory across 19 U.S. markets, published weeks before any other index, based on the local databases used directly by Realtors to list properties and record sales.
Click the following link to read the complete Redfin Real-Time Home Price Tracker.
Market-Specific Highlights and Lowlights:
Home prices:
- For the second consecutive month, all of the 19 cities measured saw home prices rise year over year.
- Austin was the only market to post a decrease in home prices month over month, dropping by 0.4%.
- Sacramento led the price gains with a 39% year-over-year increase.
- Baltimore saw the smallest gain in prices, with a 3.2% increase year over year.
Sales volume:
- New York’s Long Island posted the largest yearly sales volume increase, with home sales up 74.7% from May 2012.
- Boston had the largest monthly increase in sales volume, up 38% from April.
- San Francisco’s sales volumes saw the most drastic decline, with a 7.7% drop from a year earlier.
- San Francisco and Las Vegas had the smallest monthly gains, both up 4.2% from April.
Inventory:
- Chicago and Phoenix were the only markets that had an increase in inventory from May 2012, withPhoenix up 14.1% and Chicago up 0.4%.
- Cities with the largest monthly gains in inventory included Chicago (16.8%), Denver (10%), San Jose (8.4%), Washington (6.3%), and Seattle (5%).
- Six of the 19 markets saw monthly inventory shrink in May and five of those were in California, including Inland Empire (-7.3%), Las Vegas (-1.4%), Los Angeles (-1.3%), Ventura (-1.0%), andSan Francisco (-0.5%).
- The only market outside of California to post a decrease in inventory was Boston, showing a monthly decline of 1% from April.
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