By the year 2011, housing in Howard County will be at a premium.
That?s when some 5,400 military, Department of Defense civilian and contract employees and 4,900 of their family members will be reporting for duty at neighboring Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County. Part of the federal Base Realignment and Closure initiative, these transplanted government and military employees will be looking for a place to call home.
Ken Menser, chairman of the Howard County BRAC Task Force, said Tuesday it?s not known if the county?s current housing stock will be able to handle the influx of new residents. But, he said, it?s a subject high on the list of priorities for the task force.
“We?re still looking at it, and we are about half way through that look,” Menser said.
The task force meets at 3:30 p.m. today at the Howard County Gateway Administrative Building in Columbia to continue its discussion in a public meeting.
But for the time being, real estate professionals in Howard County are wondering if sellers who took their homes off the market during a recent downturn will come back into the game or wait for better days.
“We are estimating that 15 percent to 25 percent of the sellers who did not sell [last year] took their homes off the market,” said Jim Bodine, a Realtor in the Clarksville office of Long & Foster Real Estate. “We don?t know how many of those will re-enter.”
During November, the latest month for which figures are available, 295 houses sold in Howard County, down 18.96 percent from the same month in 2005. The median selling price was $373,500, down slightly more than 1 percent from the previous year?s median price of $377,494, according to statistics gathered by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc.
“We are seeing a reduction in the number of sales, but not the price,” Bodine said. “That speaks to the strength of our local market.”
That strength, he said, is built on the popularity of the county?s school district, which ranks as the state?s top school district based on student performance on the Maryland School Assessments.
Bodine said the coming months should bode well for the market.
“We?re seeing signs of increasing activities, but buyers are exercising extreme caution and are taking a lot longer to consider all of their options,” he said. “We see a fairly strong spring market, but we?re not sure of its depth.”
