Chattanoogans snapped up more homes in September, shrugging off fears about global economic turmoil and helping to boost local home prices.
The Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors said today that local Realtors sold 772 homes in the Chattanooga area last month, up 12.9 percent from a year ago. In the first nine months of the year, local home sales rose a healthy 13.6 percent to 6,694.
The pace of local home sales increases are double what the National Association of Realtors reports of the country as a whole.
That helped bid up the median price of homes sold by Chattanooga Realtors in September to $150,700, or 2.5 percent more than a year ago.
With home sales up, the average time it takes to sell a house in Chattanooga fell by nearly a third in the past year to 67 days.
“The overall tempo of real estate is experiencing a healthy number of good omens,” the Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors said in its monthly report. “The job market has shown continual improvement, jobless rates are down, real average housrly and weekly earnings have been up and there has been good news in household formation.”
Nationwide, the National Association of Realtors said today that sales of existing homes jumped 4.7 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.55 million. Buying activity rebounded after slipping in August, indicating that demand for housing continues despite a series of recent economic hits: stock market declines, falling factory orders, a slowdown in China, struggles in emerging nations such as Brazil and Turkey, and stagnation in Europe.
“The report adds to the evidence that home sales, and housing activity generally, are trending up,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. “The strength in housing has been offsetting weakness in manufacturing.”