Maryland Real Estate by Pamela DuBois: #Real Estate News for first half of #2015

Maryland Real Estate by Pamela DuBois: #Real Estate News for first half of #2015: Homes sold : During the first six months of 2015, homes sold at a fairly brisk pace. For the mid-Atlantic region as a whole, an increase of...

#Real Estate News for first half of #2015

Homes sold: During the first six months of 2015, homes sold at a fairly brisk pace. For the mid-Atlantic region as a whole, an increase of 13.9 percent versus the first six months of 2015. All of the counties reviewed also showed solid growth with Anne Arundel +14.8 percent, Baltimore +22.3 percent, Montgomery +10.6 percent, Prince George's +14.4 percent and Howard +15.4 percent.

But, as a word of caution, much of this growth is due more to an unusually weak start in 2014 than  a reflection of a strong 2015. Word on the street is that sales for the first half of 2015 are just so-so.

Median prices: Even though the number of home sold is up, median prices are essentially flat. For the first half of 2015, the median price in the mid-Atlantic was $300,667. That compares with $300,483 for 2014, an increase of only 0.1 percent. With the exception of Prince George's County, all the other counties were also flat: Anne Arundel -0.8 percent, Baltimore -0.4 percent, Montgomery +0.1 percent and Howard +2.2 percent.

Conversely, the median price in Prince George's was up 7.1 percent. Price appreciation in PG County has been outperforming most other counties for a while now. However, a deeper dive into the data reveals that it's primarily due to a change in the mix for what type of homes are being sold.

One of the problem areas in today's market is a lack of inventory. The number of homes available for sale isn't keeping pace with the rate of sale. For example, as we said, the number of homes sold in the mid-Atlantic region was up 13.9 percent versus the first six months of 2014. But the number of active listings only increased by 9.1 percent.

The same imbalance exists across most all of the counties we reviewed. The exception was Montgomery County. For that area, home sales were up by 10.6 percent; however, the number of active listings was up by 18.3 percent. Howard County was also close with sales up by 15.4 percent and listings up by nearly the same amount at +14.0 percent. The largest discrepancy was in Baltimore County, where the rate of sale (+22.3 percent) was almost 3 times the growth in inventory (+7.9 percent).

For the remainder of 2015, we don't expect things to change much from the first half. The Federal Reserve has signaled that they will begin to raise rates toward the end of 2015, but they also said that any rate increases will be gradual.

Nevertheless, this will cause mortgage rates to rise, and that will probably have the biggest impact on the market since buyers have become accustom to rock bottom rate. Plus, if the cost of a mortgage does start to go up, that could actually spur a short-term burst in sales, as buyers rush in to beat rising rates.

And it all tends to get wrapped up in how the economy is performing as a whole. We'll have to wait and see, but we don't see any shift in the market for the rest of the year.