Home sales in area up 10% over '08

By Jamie Smith Hopkins

Buyers snapped up 10 percent more homes in the Baltimore metro area last month than they did a year earlier, the biggest increase since 2005 and a sign that the long-depressed housing market could finally be turning a corner.

July was the second month in a row that home sales rose year-over-year, according to numbers released Monday by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. In June, the increase was 2 percent. The Baltimore-area housing market hasn't seen two back-to-back months of improving sales since the peak of the buying frenzy four years ago.

But home sellers eager for values to follow suit could be in for a long wait. Average prices in the metro area last month were down almost 7 percent from a year earlier, to about $298,000, which is below what they were in 2005. Some economists expect continued declines for a while.

They're predicting two housing-market "bottoms." Sales first. Then prices.

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