After several months of growth - sales, new contracts, and median prices flatten; Low inventory continues, active listings down 2,500 from last year

OVERVIEW

After several months of strong year-over-year growth, sales and new contracts in the Baltimore Metro Region have slowed, and are essentially unchanged from a year ago. While this could indicate softening demand, it is still too early to distinguish a pattern. At a more granular level, single-family homes brought down the growth rate for the market as a whole because they make up more than half of the region’s sales and new contract in any given month. Sales and new contracts on single-family homes dropped from this time last year, while condos and townhomes experienced growth or remained steady.

The real estate market in the DC Metro, Baltimore Metro, Northern Virginia and Greater DC area continued to strengthen in 2012.  We decided to take a closer look at the year-over-year trends for a variety of metrics and identify some Top Fives per region.  Most Expensive, Most Affordable, Biggest Price Increase, Biggest Increase in Sales, Shortest DOM, Longest DOM, and which ZIP codes had the lowest or highest sales to list price ratio per region. 

Of all ZIP codes analyzed, 22206 in Great Falls had the highest median sale price at $961,250. Baltimore's 21223 had the lowest median price at $18,000. 22205 in Arlington had the lowest Median DOM, where half the homes sold were on the market 10 days or less!