Homeowners who sold during the third quarter realized an average price gain of $40,658 (17 percent) from the purchase price of their property, the highest average price gain for home sellers since the third quarter of 2007 according to RealtyTrac’s September and Q3 2015 U.S. Home Sales Report. It also shows home sellers in the third quarter on average had owned their home for 6.72 years when they sold.
The eight-year high in average price gains for home sellers in the third quarter came despite slowing home price appreciation. The average sale price of single family homes and condos nationwide during the quarter was $263,976, up 0.2 percent from the previous quarter and up 2.4 percent from the third quarter of 2014, making this the slowest year-over-year price appreciation in any quarter since home prices bottomed out in the first quarter of 2012.
The report also shows 2,487,664 existing single family and condo sales through the first three quarters of 2015, the highest level for the first nine months of a year since 2006 — a nine-year high.
“An increasing number of homeowners in 2015 have been cashing out the home equity they’ve gained during the housing recovery of the past three years,” RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist said. “That may be a good decision because the data points to a plateauing market going forward. Home price appreciation is slowing, a trend that will continue if interest rates rise in the coming months as expected. Meanwhile the threat of rising interest rates combined with lowered premiums for buyers using FHA loans is spurring more demand.”
Buyers using Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans — typically low downpayment loans utilized by first time homebuyers and other buyers without equity to bring to the closing table — accounted for 23.4 percent of all single family home and condo sales with financing — excluding all-cash sales — in the third quarter of 2015, up from 23.2 percent in the second quarter and up from 17.9 percent in the third quarter of 2014 to the highest share since the second quarter of 2012.
Major metro areas with the highest share of FHA loans in the third quarter included Bakersfield, California (41.3 percent), Modesto, California (40.4 percent), McAllen, Texas (39.7 percent), Las Vegas (37.1 percent), Riverside, California (37 percent), and Dayton, Ohio (29 percent).
RealtyTrac analyzed 171 counties with at least 500 sales in the third quarter and where home price data was available both on the most recent purchase and the previous purchase. In 20 of those counties (12 percent) home sellers on average in the third quarter sold for a lower price than what they purchased for.
Counties where sellers on average sold for the biggest percentage loss were Pasco County, Florida in the Tampa metro area (11.1 percent loss), Hamilton County, Ohio in the Cincinnati metro area (9.4 percent loss), McHenry County, Illinois (9.0 percent loss), Hernando County, Florida in the Tampa metro area (8.5 percent loss), and Mobile County, Alabama in the Mobile metro area (6.8 percent loss). Among these five counties, homeowners who sold in the third quarter had owned for an average of 6.93 years when they sold.
There were 245,220 all-cash sales of single family homes and condos in the third quarter, 27.8 percent of all single family home and condo sales during the quarter. Down from 28.7 percent of all sales in the previous quarter and down from 29.0 percent of all sales a year ago.
In the third quarter, there were 15,956 sales of single family homes and condos to institutional investors, 1.9 percent of all sales. That was up from 1.6 percent in the previous quarter but down from 5.0 percent a year ago.
Visit www.realtytrac.com for the full report.