WASHINGTON — Sales of existing homes fell for the sixth straight month in January, dropping to the slowest sales pace on record. Median home prices were also down, and many analysts predicted further price declines in the months ahead given high levels of unsold homes.
The National Association of Realtors said Monday that sales of single-family homes and condominiums dropped by 0.4 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.89 million units.
That was the slowest sales pace, going back to 1999, and was seen as evidence that the steepest slump in housing in a quarter-century has yet to hit bottom.
In the Denver metro area, home-sale closings in January were down 7.2 percent from December, according to a separate report released earlier this month. But properties placed under contract rose 33.8 percent in January compared with December and were up 6 percent compared with January 2007.
Nationally, the median price of a home sold in January slid to $201,100, a drop of 4.6 percent from a year ago. Particularly alarming, analysts said, was the fact that the inventory of unsold homes jumped to a 10.3 months’ supply, meaning it would take that long to sell the 4.19 million homes on the market at the January sales pace.
That was up from 9.7 months in December and just below a two-decade high of 10.5 months hit in October. During the peak of the housing boom in 2005, the supply of homes relative to sales stood at 4.5 months.
In metro Denver, the median price of a single-family home fell 1.4 percent to $216,950 in January from December, while the median condo price fell 4.3 percent to $134,000.
Denver Post staff writer Margaret Jackson contributed to this report.
