The median sale price of homes in Baltimore City and its surrounding counties fell for a fifth straight month and the average sale price fell for a third consecutive month, according to data released Thursday.
Realtors called the slight downward slide part of an ongoing market correction and a long-awaited adjustment by sellers of their asking price.
“Prices have to come down because we went up for how many months in a row, for how many years in a row,” said Cathy Werner, president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors. “But if you look at the percentages by which we?re coming down, that?s not bad. If you bought your house five years ago, you?re getting a nice appreciation. If you bought two years ago, you might be hurting.”
The median sale price, the price in which half of all home sales fell below and half above, was $259,900, down 3.2 percent from March 2007 according to data released by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., a Realtor-owned information service. It was the fifth straight month of decline, including decreases of 2.54 percent in February and 5.66 in January.
For the second month in a row, the steepest decline came in Carroll County, which saw its median sale price fall 14 percent to $294,950. In January, the county?s median sale price fell more than 24 percent from the year before.
“It?s a consolidation like you?re having in any marketplace. … Sometimes a correction is necessary,” said Rusling Blackburn, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker in North Carroll and president of the county?s Board of Realtors. “Prices did run very high and maybe too high.”
Sales volume across the metro area fell by more than 30 percent from the year before, but Realtors said the downward numbers trend can?t continue forever.
By late summer, Realtors predicted the sales volume and price slides would level out.
“We didn?t see it really start to die, in sales, until late June or July, which showed up in the numbers in August,” said Ross Mackesey, sales manager at Coldwell Banker Federal Hill. “I would think by August we?ll be on a par with 2007 [sales numbers].”
