After significant drops from 2007 and 2008, prices in the region have stabilized and shifted slightly up and down, suggesting the market is seeking a bottom.

By KEVIN POST, Press of A.C. Business Editor | Posted: Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Median home prices in southern New Jersey in the first quarter of 2010 were down 2.6 percent from the same period the year before, while nationwide prices fell by 0.7 percent, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday.

The region’s price drop, after near stability the previous quarter, went against a nation-leading 9 percent jump in home prices in the Northeast as a whole.

Sales levels were strong in the state, however, despite severe winter storms in January and February.

New Jersey was one of just three states (with Michigan and Wyoming) to show a gain in sales — up 6.8 percent from the prior quarter and 14.5 percent from the same period a year ago — in the Realtor report. The state’s annualized sales rate was 120,600 homes.

“That’s extremely encouraging news,” Richard Shaffer III, president of the Atlantic City & County Board of Realtors, said after hearing the numbers at a NAR conference in Washington on Tuesday. “Strong sales will probably carry over into the second quarter, since a lot of sales from the federal tax credits will close then.”

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said the association is encouraged by the stabilizing of home prices. He said the federal incentives for homebuyers that ended in April resulted in about a million additional sales and were very effective in reducing excess housing inventory.

Nationwide, first-quarter sales of all existing homes fell 14 percent from the last quarter of 2009 — for an annualized rate of 5.1 million sales. That’s still 11.4 percent better than sales in the first quarter of 2009.

The median sale price for houses in the greater Atlantic City market — in which NAR includes Atlantic, Cape May and Cumberland counties — fell to $213,300 in the first three months of 2010 from $219,100 in the same period in 2009.

Carol Anderson, president of the Cape May County Association of Realtors, said home prices have fallen a bit as most sellers have become more realistic.

“Prices may have gone down somewhat, but those prices are the right prices for this market right now,” Anderson said.

The Cape May County Realtors said its sales were up 26 percent in the quarter to 354, from 280 in the first quarter of 2009.

After significant drops from 2007 and 2008, prices in the region have stabilized and shifted slightly up and down, suggesting the market is seeking a bottom.

Southern New Jersey’s median home price was $269,700 in 2007 and $253,300 in 2008, NAR said, dropping to $221,300 in 2009. In last year’s second quarter it dropped to $218,700 before rising to $223,000 and then edging downward.

Shaffer said the market for houses priced under $300,000 is doing very well, with sales coming in at about 4 percent off the listing price.

“I think pricier homes are affecting the price decline,” he said, with those typically selling for as much as 6 percent below listing price.

Across the nation, 91 of the 152 metropolitan areas where the Realtors track existing single-family home sales saw prices higher in the first quarter than the year before.

Judith Saylor, with Prudential Fox & Roach Realtors in Northfield, said home prices might fall a bit more in the area, depending on the location.

“I think we went so high so fast that there’s probably room for some more lowering of prices,” Saylor said.

One of her listings with a reduced-price sign on it — a 3,300-square-foot historic home on an acre on Shore Road in Linwood — was listed at $849,000 in June and has now been reduced to $719,000, she said.

“Sellers are still under the illusion that properties are worth so much money, and we’re under the illusion that we can get more than we really can,” she said.

The NAR quarterly survey, begun in 1979, tracks the prices of all homes sold in the quarter.

Zillow.com, which uses a proprietary formula to figure homes prices, said this week that Atlantic City area home prices were 6.4 percent lower than the year before.