01/07/09

• Home

• The Magazine

• Archives

• Webcasts

• Advertising

• Job Board

• New York

• Subscribe

National Market Report

The penthouse at the Millennium Tower in San Francisco sold recently for $11 million.

Atlanta
Atlanta home prices so far this year have dropped off just 2 percent since 2007 despite slower sales and an oversupply of unsold homes. The city currently ranks fifth among metro markets in the U.S. for price stability, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Foreign buyers are taking advantage of a weak dollar and helping keep the region's real estate market afloat. A National Association of Realtors study concluded that Georgia ranked ninth among all states for foreign investment in residential real estate in 2007.

Boston
The median sales price of a single-family home decreased in 199 communities in Massachusetts last year and increased in just 53, the Boston Globe reported. The 50,435 single-family home sales figure tallied last year in Massachusetts was 5,000 fewer than in 2006 and the lowest total for the state since 1992. The Warren Group, a real estate publisher, said the Boston-area community with the largest uptick was the exclusive suburb of Lincoln, which saw a 27 percent year-over-year increase in the median sales price.

A $1.4 billion project to restore commuter rail service from two Massachusetts cities to Boston could drive up real estate values, the Boston Globe reported. New Bedford and Fall River officials are hoping for revitalization similar to that seen in Brockton, Newburyport and Worcester, where rail service to the Hub has been restored since 1994. The Warren Group reported that the average single-family home prices in those cities appreciated up to 30 percent faster than their county average after commuter rail service returned.

Chicago
The inventory of unsold condos in downtown Chicago may be at an all-time high, but a record 5,900 new residences will be added to the area's existing stock in 2008. A total of 4,150 new condos and townhouses were built in 2006, and 4,300 units were constructed in 2007. But sales of these new units fell 29 percent last year to 2,961, from 4,180 the previous year, the Chicago Sun Times reported. According to Chicago-based Appraisal Research Counselors, 5,814 condos remained unsold on the market at the end of 2007.

The McGraw-Hill Construction Outlook for Chicago reported that total construction in the greater Chicago area could decline 8 percent in 2008, to just under $18 billion. Office starts will see an 11 percent drop-off, according to the report, although the projected $1 billion in starts will be historically high. Retail construction is also expected to fall 12 percent this year, to $977 million. McGraw-Hill expects unemployment in the region to rise to 5.4 percent in 2008 from 4.9 percent last year, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Detroit
Wayne County had the highest foreclosure rate among the nation's 100 largest metro areas in 2007, the Detroit Free Press reported. According to RealtyTrac, which defines metro Detroit as Wayne County, 4.9 percent of Wayne County homes entered some stage of the foreclosure process last year. These default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions increased 68 percent from 2006. That amounted to about 4.8 times the 2007 national average of 1 percent of homes in some stage of foreclosure.

Las Vegas
A record 39.2 million people visited Las Vegas in 2007 and filled more than 90 percent of the city's hotel rooms, despite an increase of just 342 in the number of available rooms from the previous year. A Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority report concluded that Sin City visitation grew by about 300,000 people last year. Visitors in 2007 spent on average $132 per night for a hotel room, a 10 percent year-over-year increase and the fifth highest rate in the country, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

Las Vegas' industrial vacancy rate increased in almost every submarket in 2007, according to a Grubb & Ellis report. Industrial vacancy, which has been inching up in the city since 2006, reached 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 for 93.2 million square feet of total space, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The northwest submarket had the highest vacancy rate at 31.6 percent, followed by Henderson's 8.2 percent rate. The reported average asking rent in the fourth quarter was $10.37 per square foot triple-net.

Los Angeles
Only 9,983 homes were sold in Southern California's six-county region in January, the lowest total in 20 years, according to data tracking firm DataQuick Information Systems. Nearly one out of four properties sold in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego counties in January were in foreclosure, which could be putting downward pressure on home values, the Los Angeles Times reported. The median sales price was $415,000, 18 percent below 2007's peak and the lowest since January 2005.

Philadelphia
Fewer home sales and lower prices have hurt Philadelphia's income from real estate-transfer taxes in recent months, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The city's Finance Department said income from transfer taxes has been running about $5 million short of estimates, with a possible shortfall of $15 million by mid-year. Home prices dropped an average 4.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, and the 4,725 total home sales were the fewest on record since spring 2003, according to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Phoenix
A total of 3,350 homes were sold in the Phoenix area in January, compared to 4,520 resales the previous year and a record 9,360 sales posted in January 2005, the Phoenix Business Journal reported. The last time sales totals were that low for the month was in January 2002, when 3,345 home sales were recorded, according to an Arizona State University study. The median sales price for a Phoenix home in January was $230,000, down from $232,000 in December and $260,000 in January 2007.

The 1.59 million square feet of sublease office space in the Valley at the end of 2007 represented only 2.3 percent of total office supply, but it was also twice the amount of sublease space that was on the market a year earlier, the Arizona Republic reported. Experts are worried that the 4.57 million square feet of office space under construction in the Valley at the end of 2007 will depress rents. CB Richard Ellis data show that Scottsdale accounts for 637,659 square feet, or 40.2 percent, of the Valley's current sublease supply.

San Francisco
As the broader San Francisco housing market continues to tumble, the Bay Area's rich are still buying high-end homes for record sums, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The penthouse at the unfinished Millennium Tower at 301 Mission Street sold recently for $11 million, or $2,289 per square foot. In the fourth quarter of 2007, 40 condos and single-family homes sold for more than $3 million, a total of $213.8 million, according to Pacific Union GMAC Real Estate. That was up from 22 sales for $119.4 million a year earlier.

Seattle
The median home sales price in Washington dropped 2.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 from the year-ago period. That represented the first year-over-year decline since the Washington Center for Real Estate Research began tracking the data in 1994, the Seattle Times reported. Fourth-quarter sales in the state dropped 25.6 percent to 99,120, from 133,220 in the same period of 2006. Sales were down 28.1 percent to 24,170 in King County, while the median sales price declined 0.2 percent to $439,000.

About 400,000 square feet of retail space was added to Seattle's greater downtown area in 2007, bringing the total to 5 million square feet, according to the Downtown Seattle Association. But some say there is not enough retail development underway in the area's downtown core. In outlying areas in greater downtown, the vacancy rate for retail space increased from 5 percent in 2006 to 6 percent last year. The asking rent reportedly fell from an average of $25.02 per square foot in 2006 to $23.29 per square foot last year.

Washington, D.C.
Montgomery County's once booming real estate market could finally be slowing down, with new developments farther from Washington faring worse than older neighborhoods closer to the Capital Beltway. The average sales price of existing homes in the Bethesda-Chevy Chase area dropped 3.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, compared to the same period in 2006, according to George Mason University's Office of Housing Policy Research. In Damascus, at the county's outermost stretch of Interstate 270, the average house price fell more than 14 percent in the same period, the Washington Post reported.