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Home sales have increased dramatically in recent months, but that brisk activity is far from uniform. While cheap homes are positively flying off the shelves, sales have actually slowed in many of the more expensive markets.
It’s pretty clear that what separates the brisk markets from the slow ones is price. While the fast zip codes averaged to a median price of $279,938, the average price in the slow zips was double that at $561,113. Those lower-end home prices had been harder hit, unsurpsingly — the average year-over-year price decline for the fast zips was 30 percent versus just 12 percent for the slow ones.
For the curious, the full list of the zip codes I used can be found here.
This bifurcation, while not new, is getting more dramatic. I ran this study back in June and a quick gander at that article will show that the disparity in both sales and prices has increased markedly.
— RICH TOSCANO