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Prices for new and existing homes in Louisville last year climbed more than 4 percent, according to a 2007 real estate market report released yesterday by Jefferson County Property Valuation Administrator Tony Lindauer's office.
Median single-family home prices rose to $147,000, from $141,000 in 2006, the research found. Lindauer said the data confirms Louisville's resilience compared with other parts of the country hit hard by the housing slump.
But the report cited figures that, in some cases, conflicted with other findings. For example, Greater Louisville Association of Realtors data in the report showed a $140,000 median housing price in Louisville last year, essentially flat from the year before.
University of Louisville economist Paul Coomes, who gathered data for the report, said the local market appears to be stable because housing prices have generally increased by around 5 percent annually over the past decade.
"We did not have a bubble, so we're not having a pop," he said. "We're not having a decline in people's equity in their homes, which has definitely occurred on the West Coast and in Florida."
The study, also sponsored by the Realtors, the Mortgage Bankers Association of Louisville and the Home Builders Association of Louisville, was an effort to put the "face of reality" on Louisville's current real estate market.
The report shows that 2007 marked the second straight year that fewer homes were sold in Jefferson County than the year before, but remained above the levels of 2003, according to data from the Realtors.
"Maybe there's less listings," said Chuck Kavanaugh, executive vice president of the builders' association. "But the sales price is not going down. It's going up."
Realtors' association Executive Vice President Lisa Stephenson explained the $7,000 difference in median price by saying that the association's data only includes deals in which its members are involved.
Including condominium sales, the median home price in Louisville last year rose from $138,500 to $139,000, Stephenson said. That increase -- 0.4 percent -- was the smallest in the city since 2003. The association yesterday could not provide records dating further back.
Stephenson said any rise in home values is a positive step in the current housing market.
"When you're facing a situation like this and you've got positive appreciation … that's a great thing," she said.
The 13-county Louisville metropolitan area hasn't experienced the wild price swings in places such as Las Vegas or Naples, Fla., where values declined last year. A third set of data included in the report, covering the larger metro area, showed local price increases of 3.2 percent, trailing the national average of 3.3 percent the past two years, according to the U.S. Office of Housing Enterprise Oversight.
The original article can be found at
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200804260430/BUSINESS/804260432.
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