Condo/Co-op Prices See Drop Since Last Year

Washington, D.C.–The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported this week that the national median price for for-sale housing–condominiums and cooperatives of all stripes–was $169,200 during the second quarter of 2011. That median represents a 3.5 percent drop from the median price during the same quarter in 2010.

NAR calculated median condo/coop prices using data from 54 major U.S. metro areas. According to the organization, 14 metros showed increases in median price from a year ago, while 40 areas had declines. The MSA with the strongest increase year-over-year was Syracuse, N.Y., where median prices were up 23.4 percent, though that was something of an outlier. More typical increases were seen by Austin (up 9.8 percent), Bismarck, N.D. (up 5.4 percent) and Indianapolis (up 6.1 percent).

The steepest drop since last year was experienced by metro Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla., where median condo prices declined by a whopping 32.8 percent, even more than the metro Las Vegas drop, which was 23.2 percent. Some very large metro areas were also down. Median condo prices in the New York-Wayne-White Plains MSA were down  4.8 percent, while in metro Chicago, the drop was a much steeper 22 percent. But in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana MSA, median condo prices were up 6.2 percent.

“The condo market is more over-supplied than the single-family sector,” a spokesman for NAR tells MHN. “As a consequence, there was a somewhat larger decline in overall condo prices from a year ago. However, roughly the same percentage of metro areas saw price gains–26 percent of condo markets vs. 27 percent of single-family areas.”

The condo data was reported in the context of the organization’s 2Q11 report on valuations in the broader housing market. According to the report, the median price of a single-family home in the United States was $171,900 in the second quarter of 2011, down 2.8 percent from $176,800 in the second quarter of 2010. Also, the median existing single-family home price rose in 40 out of 150 MSAs in the second quarter from the same period in 2010, while one was unchanged and 109 areas showed price declines.