April housing reports show more homes for sale, higher prices

Posted on by Listify Me

By Chelsey Levingston,

Staff Writer

8:31 PM Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The first reports on April housing market activity show some of the area’s gains at the start of the year carried over last month.

Early estimates released Wednesday and today for April, part of the busiest time of the year for home-selling, show sellers listed their houses in the Dayton-Springfield region for higher prices than in March. Meanwhile, foreclosure filings continue to fall.

Realtor.com released Wednesday its national data on April home listings, compiled from multiple listing services across the country. Local, state and national realtors’ associations will release their April figures on Tuesday.

More people looked at properties in Dayton and Springfield in April than in March of this year and April 2011, said Julie Reynolds, a Realtor.com spokeswoman.

Realtor.com defines the Dayton-Springfield area as Clark, Greene, Miami and Montgomery counties.

Median listing prices for Dayton-Springfield were $109,900, up 1.85 percent from March and down about 1 percent from a year ago, according to the real estate website. Slightly more than 6,900 homes were listed in April, more than in March, but 25 percent below the total listed in April 2011.

The time houses remain on the market is shrinking. The average period in April was 84 days, down 16 percent from March and 11.6 percent from April 2011, Realtor.com said.

RealtyTrac Inc. today released its monthly national foreclosure report. Filings for default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions totaled 222 in Montgomery County, down nearly 8 percent from March and 66 percent from April of last year. However, foreclosure filings rose in April in surrounding counties when compared to a year ago.

“The story in Dayton is that foreclosure activity seems to be definitely past its peak and headed lower. Including the year-over-year decrease in April, the Dayton metro area has now seen annual decreases in foreclosure activity in 16 of the past 18 months,” said Daren Blomquist, a RealtyTrac spokesman.