Maryland?s residential real estate market is returning to normal ? neither booming nor busting, industry insiders say.
The market “has returned to a more normal pace so that buyers actually have the opportunity to take their time,” said Jody Landers, executive vice president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors. Homes stayon the market for about two months, compared to less than 30 days last year.
“They can do the things they should be doing in exercising due diligence,” such as shopping around for good deals on mortgage products and conducting proper home inspections before signing sales agreements, he said.
The exuberance that gripped the market during the past several years has settled down, but it?s not a bust, said John Councilman, federal housing chair for the National Association of Mortgage Brokers and president of AMC Mortgage Corp. in Fallston.
“We had a market that was escalating at wide paces,” Councilman said. “The only area that I see that is somewhat active in the under-$300,000 range. They are selling almost as soon as it hits the market. The big and expensive houses are slowing down a little bit.”
Tom Shaner, president of the Maryland Mortgage Brokers Association, said some home sellers are feeling the pinch and are slowly dropping the asking price of their property.
“Some houses may be overpriced, and we?re starting to see ?reduced price? on the for sale signs,” he said.
Landers said more houses are on the market and are taking longer to sell.
“We were in a three-year period where the market was breaking new records every single month,” he said. “That has stopped.”
In July, the latest month for which numbers are available, the median “sold price” increased 6 percent while the total number of units sold declined by 23.5 percent, Landers said. There were 6,230 new listings taken in July, up from 5,658 in July 2005. Pending sales contracts in July totaled 3,430, down from 4,456 in July 2005. In July 2005, homes sold almost immediately, where today property can take up to two months to sell.
But with the Federal Reserve Board indicating it will not raise interest rates in the near term, and with Maryland expecting to gain almost 10,000 new jobs as the U.S. Defense Department?s Base Realignment and Closure program get under way in about two years, some property owners are contacting home-improvement contractors with an eye to the future, Shaner said.
“People already are interested in upgrading their property,” he said. “Kitchens and baths are always a good investment, where a pool is not necessarily an investment that will come back to you. And adding on another bedroom might help.”
He said those property owners near military installations in Fort Meade and Aberdeen will be in prime position to sell their upgraded homes once the influx of military jobs begins.
