Home sales in Arkansas were flat in July compared with July 2015, the Arkansas Realtors Association said Friday.
There were 3,124 homes sold in the state in July, only five fewer than in July a year ago.
But there was a decline of 206 homes sold compared with the 3,330 sales in June this year.
"You usually see a big surge in the summertime closings," said Michael Pakko, chief economist at the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. "But it is not unusual for July to be down a little from June. That's not a huge concern."
May, June and July had excellent growth in home sales, said Kathy Deck, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
May had the highest total home sales since 2006 and June was only slightly below May's total.
May, June and July this year were up 7.2 percent over the same months last year, Pakko said.
Through the first seven months of this year, there was an increase of 8.5 percent in homes sold in Arkansas over the same period last year.
One reason for the strength in the housing market is the growth in employment in the state, said Ted Jones, chief economist for Stewart Title Guaranty Co. of Houston. Stewart Title has three company-owned offices and almost 100 independent, affiliated title companies in Arkansas.
Arkansas' unemployment rate was 3.9 percent in July and has been below 4 percent since April. There have been more than 1.3 million employed Arkansans every month since March.
"I believe jobs run everything," Jones said in an interview while in Bentonville last month. "If you think about it, the only people who buy a house but don't have a job have blue hair, gray hair or no hair."
Home prices are up 4.5 percent for the first seven months of the year in Arkansas.
Arkansas is ahead of the country in home-sales growth and home-price increases through seven months.
"So those jobs are [translating] into a demand for housing," Jones said.
A significant portion of the state's home sales is occurring in Northwest Arkansas.
Almost 5,560 homes have been sold in Benton and Washington counties in the first seven months of this year, 15 percent higher than for the same period last year.
"If [growth] is jobs driven, then it is sustainable," Jones said. "If it's economically sustainable, the [growth] is sustainable."
Pakko agreed that a lot of job growth and home-sales growth in Arkansas is in Benton and Washington counties.
"We're also seeing fairly good job growth and home-sales growth in northeast Arkansas and in some of the counties in central Arkansas as well," Pakko said. "But when you look at the southern half of the state, job growth and home-sales growth are both a little bit slower."
The growth in Northwest Arkansas has come particularly in Benton County, Deck said. The May, June and July home-sales totals this year in Benton County were better than any time since before the recession began in late 2007, she said.
"We really do see a continued hot market [in home sales], which reflects the continued hot job market [in Benton County]," Deck said. "Downtown Bentonville, with Crystal Bridges, is virtually unrecognizable from just five years ago. There has been so much investment in the community."
State Realtors provide home sales figures for 43 of Arkansas' 75 counties.
Business on 09/03/2016