Home sales and prices in Iowa continued their upward trend in September, according to a new report from the Iowa Association of Realtors (IAR).
Don Marple of Davenport is the organization’s president. “We had 2,819 homes sold in September 2012. This year, we sold 3,020. That’s a nice increase,” Marple says. It’s an increase of 7.1-percent.
The average sale price of a home purchased in Iowa increased 3.9 percent. The average sale price was $148,158 in September 2012 and $153,890 in September 2013.
Marple believes the uptick in pricing is “sustainable” in the current market. “Even though our new listings increased by almost 12-percent in September, we found the year-long inventory is still down about 4.5 percent. So, we’re getting more homes coming on the market but we’re still (below) where we were a year ago, in the amount of about 900 homes,” Marple says. “We just want to keep that growing.”
The IAR report shows home sales throughout the third quarter of this year hit an eight-year high. “Year-over-year, for the third quarter of 2013, we had the highest number of sales since the third quarter of 2005,” Marple said.
The report states, last month, the average number of days a home sold in Iowa stayed on the market was 79. That’s down from an average of 94 days in September 2012.