The million-dollar-plus market in high-end communities is still thriving after a couple of quarters of indecision. Yet lower-price markets into which flippers tried to introduce high-end homes appear troubled.
According to an Inquirer analysis of 19,390 home sales in 2005 and 2006 in the three counties, median prices in most towns marched higher, though at a slower pace than in past years.
But some places - notably Stone Harbor - took it on the chin in 2006, only to bounce back in the first quarter of 2007.
Stone Harbor's median price fell to $951,000 in 2006, down 32 percent from $1.4 million in 2005 - a year in which its median price rose 65 percent over the previous year, the analysis showed. By spring, the data showed, Stone Harbor's median was up 90 percent, to $1,412,500, albeit on only 10 sales.
It's not uncommon for prices to rise as a real estate market cycles downward, said Kevin Gillen, a Wharton School research fellow and vice president of Econsult, a Philadelphia economic-consulting firm.
"Volume and days on the market are leading indicators" of how a market is performing, he said, "whereas prices are a lagging indicator."
According to The Inquirer analysis, median prices rose in 75 percent of the 72 municipalities that had enough transactions to offer an accurate sense of individual markets. There was a substantial decline in sales volume, which fell by more than 8,000 units in 2006 to 19,390, from 27,709 in 2005.
"Because a vacation home can be more of an elective purchase than a primary home, the slowdown was deeper at the Shore" than in metropolitan Philadelphia, said Steve Storti, a senior vice president at Prudential Fox & Roach Realtors.
