County sees spot of light in housing

Amid the gloom and doom of local, regional and national housing market statistics comes a glimmer of good news for Prince William County -- second quarter sales show increases.

"We have noticed a fairly significant uptick in sales," said Bill Vaughn, an economist and financial analyst for the county, referring to statistics his department tracks at the Metropolitan Regional Information System.

In interviews last week about a different housing market story, both Vaughn and an official with the county Association of Realtors credited the upswing in sales with a corresponding drop in prices -- and figures do seem to bear truth to that view. In short, statistics reveal what some might see as free-market common sense at work: The lower the price, the more the sales.

According to www.VARealtor.com numbers, Prince William County saw a 72 percent increase in the 1,477 home sales recorded for the second quarter of 2007, and the 2,542 figure reported for the same three-month period in 2008. That's the highest jump between these two time frames for the 24 Virginia jurisdictions that are included in the report. The Northern Virginia region as a whole, by comparison, saw a 7 percent decline during these same two periods, the report indicates.

The big difference seems to be price. At the same time Prince William's sales statistics were soaring 72 percent, median and average sales prices for homes were falling by 34 percent and 31 percent, respectively. In the second quarter of 2008, the county's median price for a home was $242,232; in the same quarter for 2007, that number stood at $366,845. For the average, the second quarter numbers in Prince William stood at $275,311 in 2008 and $398,775 in 2007.

In this same time period, meanwhile, Northern Virginia's home prices only dropped on average 12 percent, from $551,010 to $483,643 and in the median, from $477,346 to $411,550, the Web site's figures showed.

The MRIS site tells a similar story.

In Prince William in the last quarter of 2007, when home prices averaged $355,900, sales totaled 1,134. In the first quarter of 2008, when average prices dropped to $306,300, total sales conversely grew, to 1,161.

By ZIP code, some communities in the county have likewise seen the same trend of dropping-prices-equal-increasing-sales. For instance, when comparing first quarter data between 2007 and 2008, price decreases of 24-plus percent in Dumfries led to sales increases of just more than 23 percent. In Triangle, price drops of 27 percent led top sales gains of 100 percent; in Dale City, price decreases averaging about 29 percent led to a 43-plus percent increase in sales.

MRIS analysis credits job growth with some of the housing market gains.

"Employment increased by 113 jobs in Prince William County during January and February," according to the site. "The solid job growth in February provides strong home sales, while historically low mortgage rates should continue to spur sales."

Stronger home sales numbers should be seen in Manassas and Manassas Park in upcoming months, MRIS predicts. The same is said of the counties of Fauquier, Loudoun, Fairfax, Stafford and Culpeper, as well as the city of Fredericksburg, where solid job growth coupled with "historically low mortgage rates should continue to spur sales," according to MRIS.

Staff writer Cheryl Chumley can be reached at 703-670-1907.