Basking Ridge Real Estate Market Update

The National Association of Realtors announced yesterday that Existing Home Sales eased, but there is a silver lining, first time home buyers are responding to the low mortgage rates and tax credits. First, the numbers - "Existing-home sales – including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – declined 3.0 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate1 of 4.57 million units in March from a downwardly revised level of 4.71 million in February, and were 7.1 percent lower than the 4.92 million-unit pace in March 2008," NAR reports. The Basking Ridge Real Estate Market saw 18 Units close for the month of March compared to 24 Units for March of '08. We are likely to see April's Sales numbers also ease.

There is good news on the horizon. April's pending sales are off to a very nice start - indicating that buyers are coming into the market and across all price points. The real estate market is a bottom up market - the lower price points need to sell first to allow people to move up in housing and buy the bigger house. "An NAR practitioner survey in March showed first-time buyers accounted for 53 percent of transactions." This is good news and something that we will continue to monitor.