Home sales in state up for March, group says

Home sales in Arkansas in March jumped almost 16 percent compared with March last year, the Arkansas Realtors Association said Wednesday.

There were 2,526 homes sold in March, up from 2,182 a year earlier.

The average home price in the 43 counties surveyed by the association rose 8.5 percent to $158,959 in March.

March was a continuation of the trend for the past couple of years of the housing market in the state recovering from the recession, said Michael Pakko, chief economist at the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

"It all fits into an economy that is picking up steam," Pakko said.

Most of the larger counties in the state had significant improvement in March, Pakko said.

"The strength that we see in the Northwest and Northeast Arkansas counties is really mirroring the employment growth there as well," Pakko said.

Home sales were up more than 50 percent in Craighead County in March, the biggest increase among the state's larger counties.

There are several reasons for the improvement, said Jim Drake, principal broker for Re/Max Real Estate Centre in Jonesboro.

There has been a significant increase in businesses and jobs in the Jonesboro area recently, Drake said. For example, he said several restaurants and a large Kroger supermarket have opened. And doctors and nurses are still being brought in by the Northeast Arkansas Baptist Memorial Hospital which opened a couple of years ago, he said.

And there has been growth in new home construction in Craighead County, Drake said.

With the growth in sales, the inventory of homes on the market is shrinking, Drake said.

In Sebastian County, sales were up 30 percent in March.

Contributing factors to the growth in sales include the planned Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine and the new headquarters for ArcBest Corp., said Chuck Fawcett, principal broker for Chuck Fawcett Realty in Fort Smith.

Even though neither is completed, they are stimulating companies in the area to begin adding employees to begin to take care of those two major projects, Fawcett said.

"We have a lot of small businesses that are growing right now," Fawcett said. "There is a lot of demand for housing here at this time."

Other counties with big improvements in sales in March were Faulkner County, up 31 percent; Saline County, up 27 percent; Benton County, up 19 percent; and Pulaski County, up 16 percent.

For the first three months of the year, there were 6,200 homes sold in the 43 counties, up 10.2 percent from 5,625 through three months last year.

"That's a pretty substantial gain, and is further evidence of the momentum," Pakko said. "I wouldn't expect that pace to continue throughout the year. But it continues to point to ongoing improvement."

The average home price for the first three months was $154,964, up from $146,685 over the same period last year.

The increase in home sales prices is consistent with other gauges of the housing market, Pakko said.

"The sales price continues to increase so we are definitely past the [bottom] in prices and we're back up," Pakko said.

Business on 05/21/2015

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