In the current housing climate, it isn't easy to find a silver lining.
Local home sales statistics (PDF)
But if you live in Lancaster County or work as a real estate agent here, try this one:
The York market is a heck of a lot worse.
While home sales slid 14.8 percent locally in the second quarter, according to a report last week from the Lancaster County Association of Realtors, that represents an improvement over the first three months of 2008, when the number of settlements was down almost 25 percent.
In the York market, however, which encompasses York and Adams counties, sales plummeted almost 28 percent in April, May and June. A major reason for the steep decline, say those in the industry, is that Maryland residents, affected by high gas prices and their state's real estate downturn, are moving north into Pennsylvania in much smaller numbers.
The Maryland effectAccording to calculations done by Prudential Homesale Services Group using the York Multi-List System, or MLS, the drop in second-quarter sales for the York-Adams region was 27.72 percent. That number is in line with figures released last month by the Realtors Association of York & Adams Counties Inc., which showed sales slumping 25 percent in York County and 30 percent in Adams County for the first six months of 2008 compared to last year.
The York County market "has been severely affected by the experience in the southern end of county," said Doug Rebert, a managing director of Prudential Homesale Services, citing a 50 percent decrease in that area alone.
There aren't nearly as many buyers from Maryland relocating to York County to take advantage of lower housing costs, he said. Many of them work in the Baltimore area, for example, and are concerned about high gas prices that would make commuting from Pennsylvania prohibitively expensive, Rebert said.
"Basically what I've seen is, [the York market] is pretty heavily influenced by what's happening in Maryland," agreed Greg Bardell, a co-owner of Realty 1 New Home Communities.
Bardell, who does a lot of work in Maryland, said residents there still want to move to York and Adams counties, but their home values are depreciating, so they aren't looking to sell.
"And the trend is going to continue," he said. "It's going to get worse before it gets better."
"It's making life difficult for a lot of people."
Lancaster holding its ownSo Lancaster County is hardly immune from the real estate doldrums, but it could be doing a lot worse.
"I think we're faring pretty well," said Jeff Funk, president of the Lancaster County Association of Realtors.
Sales climbed in the past three months, from 399 in April to 534 in June. June's total represented the first month this year that settlements topped 500.
The quarterly total was 1,395, compared to 1,638 during the same period last year.
Prudential Homesale's Rebert said the current market is "a hangover from some extraordinary years" that's being buffeted by negative economic news.
Even so, he pointed out, the 2008 second quarter figure is only four fewer sales than what was recorded in the same period in 2000. "And that was a very good real estate year," Rebert said.
Lancaster County's "bread-and-butter market" of houses priced $250,000 and under "has performed well," he said.
Homes, however, are staying on the market somewhat longer. Through the first six months of this year, 40.7 percent of residences sold in fewer than 30 days, down from 46.3 percent in 2007. And the percentage that took more than 120 days to sell grew from 17.1 to 21.3 percent.
Rebert said the average number of days on the market for houses listed in the April-June quarter was 65.18, which is a little more than two months.
In his 33 years in the business, he said, more than half the time that average has exceeded 60 days — in many cases reaching 90 to 120 days — so historically, the current number is good.
Also, while prices in Lancaster County were down a few percentage points overall in the second quarter, the June figures were up. The average price that month increased from $199,891 to $204,282, and the median price climbed from $178,700 to $182,700. (The median price means half the properties sold above that figure and half sold below it.)
Realty 1's Bardell said Lancaster County's home prices have actually been pretty stable recently. "That's not the case in York," he said, "and it's definitely not the case in Maryland."
Paula Wolf is a staff writer for the Sunday News. She can be reached by e-mail at pwolf@lnpnews.com.
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