Housing in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley Sees Return to Normalcy

The Allentown Morning Call reports that the number of homes sold in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania continued to fall last month.

The rate of home appreciation slowed to 1 percent from the year before, and homes stayed on the market longer than the previous year.

The January statistics confirm trends that began last year, as Pennsylvania mortgage costs began to overwhelm buyers in the region.

Home sales fell by 3.5 percent in 2006, while the average days on market lengthened.

The Lehigh Valley remains attractive to home buyers, however, particularly those relocating from New Jersey, where the market is much more expensive.

A New Jersey mortgage, after all, will often set buyers back several hundred thousand more in some cases, given the Garden State’s proximity to New York City.

But real estate agent associations say the Lehigh Valley market is simply in the process of reverting to normal, after the white-hot sales atmosphere of 2004 and 2005.

Rather than tanking, Pennsylvania home prices in this region are starting to re-adjust to where they should be. The average price of a pre-existing home in Lehigh and Northampton counties was $215,000 in January.

Buoyed in large part by affordable home loan costs, that’s up 1 percent from the year before, according to data compiled by the Lehigh Valley Association of Realtors.

The number of homes sold fell by 16 percent, compared with the same period last year. This marks the eighth consecutive month that home sales fell in the Lehigh Valley.

SOURCE: Allentown Morning Call