Mississippi Housing Market Shows Mixed Results
A new housing report shows mixed results in three metropolitan markets in Mississippi, with median home prices dipping slightly in the Jackson area and climbing in the Gulfport-Biloxi area.
The latest quarterly survey by the National Association of Realtors also shows a 7.5 percent drop in the number of existing homes sold statewide, when comparing the second quarter of 2007 to the same period in 2006.
That number went from 63,600 units in 2006 to 58,800 this year.
“Mississippi has never been a boom state and neither has Jackson. We’ve always been pretty steady, we’ve never fallen to the bottom, we’ve never risen way up to the top. We just kind of wave a little bit,” said David Smith, president of David Smith Builder Inc..
“I would much rather have just a little wave going on, versus having a real great big peak and having just great numbers, and just totally crash the next year or two years later. I think that’s better for all businesses. You can judge your business model better.”
The survey says nationally home price trends are improving in some areas, such as the Mississippi housing market, as existing-home sales during the second quarter were below a year ago in 41 states.
The strongest price increase in the South was in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area of Texas, at $127,700. That was up 11.8 percent from a year ago.
The Memphis housing market, which includes parts of Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas, shows a dip of 0.9 percent in the median price of single-family existing homes.
Keonte Coleman, 27, put his northeast Jackson home up for sale after he was offered a job in North Carolina. The 27-year-old television news producer said he and his wife were able to get close to their asking price of nearly $150,000 for a three-bedroom home.
The couple will complete the sale next week.
“It was a cut-and-run kind of deal. We didn’t make a huge profit or anything like that,” he said.
Coleman said he wanted to sell quickly because of his new job but believes he could have gotten more if he had waited longer. There also were a number of other homes for sale in his neighborhood, creating stiff competition. “It’s definitely a buyer’s market” in his Jackson subdivision, he said.
Cynthia Joachim, who owns Century 21 Harry J. Joachim Inc. Realtor in Biloxi, said the national survey numbers may not include homes that are for sale by owner or homes sold by licensees who are not association members.
According to Gulf Coast Multiple Listings Service numbers, Joachim said about 770 fewer houses were sold in her area in the first two quarters of this year, compared to the first two quarters of last year.
But Mississippi home loan costs are rising - the median sales price for that time period this year was $142,000, compared to $129,500 last year.
That hike, she said, is not bad for an area ravaged by a hurricane and saddled with insurance woes and high construction prices.
Like other local markets, it also is affected by national problems such as trouble in the bad credit home loan market.
“I think that’s a healthy gain in the first two quarters,” said Joachim, a past president of the Mississippi Association of Realtors.
The average sales price on the Mississippi Gulf Coast went from $135,930 last year to $150,744 this year during those quarters - a sizable jump and still an affordable Mississippi mortgage sum.
“The number of sales are down, but the median and the average prices of those sales reported are up,” she said.
There’s no question some Mississippi home mortgage purchasing power has been eliminated from the market, she said. “People that have been home candidates in the past, may not be a home candidate today.”
But also, there is a consumer confidence factor where a loss of confidence could affect the market even if it’s based on perception and not reality.
Follow the link to continue reading this Jackson Clarion-Ledger look into the present and future of Mississippi home sales …