Housing market spinning its wheels
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Pittsburgh-area homebuyers have paid steadily higher prices for their slice of the American dream over the past decade, while the overall number of home sales continues to decline in the region.
RealSTATs reported Monday that while 2011 marked the seventh consecutive annual drop in home sales in the region, the slide appears to be leveling off and sales could actually increase in 2012.
"We may be in the bottom of a trough here," said Dan Murrer, vice president of RealSTATs, a local real estate information service. "It appears we have nowhere to go but up."
Homebuyers in the five-county region that includes Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Washington and Westmoreland counties paid an average of $158,704 for a home last year, up from $153,154 in 2010.
Last year, 23,498 homes in the five-county region changed hands, amounting to eight fewer homes than were sold in 2010.
Like other major cities across the nation that saw real estate prices rise during the first half of the new millennium, home prices here made healthy gains from 2000 to 2005. The broad real estate market crash that began to devastate many markets beginning in 2007 had only a minor impact here as home prices continued to appreciate, although at a much slower rate than before.
The median price of a single-family home in the Pittsburgh region increased an average 3.1 percent each year in the past 10 years from $87,000 in 2000 to $125,000 in 2011. In the past five years, however, the median price has risen only 1.9 percent each year from a median price of $113,500 in 2006.
"The train is slowing down in terms of home appreciation," Mr. Murrer said.
Butler County is the exception.
The number of homes sold in Butler County hit its lowest point in 2009 when 1,917 homes were sold and has been rising ever since, ending 2011 with 2,154 homes sold.
With a median home price of $185,000 in 2011, Butler home prices are the highest in the region while Westmoreland County median home prices are the lowest at $113,000 last year. In 2005, Westmoreland's median price was $112,500.
Allegheny County median home prices stood at $120,000 in 2011. Beaver County median home prices were $94,875 at the end of last year; and in Washington County the median price of a single-family home was $138,000.
First Published January 24, 2012 12:00 am
