Slide continues for existing-home sales

Existing-home sales in the eight-county Philadelphia region continued to slide in March, declining 25 percent from the same month in 2008.

Median prices fell 7.5 percent year-over-year, according to Prudential Fox & Roach's HomExpert Market Report, which tracks sales through data from Trend Multiple Listing Service.

Nationally, booming foreclosure sales in the Southwest and Florida did not lift the numbers out of the negative range. Sales declined 7.1 percent from March 2008, while prices fell 12.4 percent.

Some housing economists tried to put a positive spin on the national numbers yesterday; others did not.

"Two competing forces are driving existing-home sales," said Patrick Newport of IHS Global Insight Inc., of Lexington, Mass. "Distressed sales - foreclosures and short sales - in a handful of states, including California, Arizona, and Nevada, are driving sales up. Driving housing sales down is weak demand across most states."

Newport does not expect sales numbers to rise until the third quarter, when "the economy will no longer be hemorrhaging jobs, the flow of lending will increase, housing prices will drop further, and first-time home buyers will jump into the market in greater numbers to take advantage of a tax credit, worth up to $8,000, that expires Dec. 1."

In Philadelphia, prices of single-family homes fell 8.4 percent in the first quarter from the same period in 2008, said Kevin Gillen, an economist with the Wharton School and Econsult.

Since the boom ended two years ago, he said, city home prices, excluding condos, have fallen a cumulative 18 percent, moving Philadelphia closer to the average drop of 30 percent in the 10 largest U.S. cities tracked by S&P Case-Shiller.