Pending Home Sales Up 28.9% In Lancaster County

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Lancaster County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pending home sales grew by 28.9 percent here in April, the Lancaster County Association of Realtors said Friday.

Last month saw 495 pending sales here, up from 384 in April 2011, according to the Realtors group.

With the April surge, pending home sales in Lancaster County have climbed in 11 of the past 12 months, including the last seven in a row.

“We’re going in the right direction, and that’s exciting stuff,” said Quentin Miller, LCAR president. “I’m cautiously optimistic about the trend. This is the best we’ve seen in years.”

Read more: http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/651268_Pending-home-sales-up-28-9–in-Lancaster-County.html#ixzz1vWZ0jWNT

Lehigh Valley Housing Market Continues To Rebound

The Lehigh Valley housing market continued to rebound in April, with sales and prices up from a year ago.

A total of 466 homes sold in April in Lehigh and Northampton counties, up 24.9 percent from the same month a year ago, according to the Prudential Patt, White Real Estate HomExpert Market Report. The median sale price was $170,000, up 6.3 percent from a year ago and up 8.4 percent from the median sale price in March.

April was the tenth consecutive month of year-to-year sales increases and it was the second straight month of price increases. If the sales pace and price trends holds, it will mean the local housing market bottomed out last year.

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-home-sales-april-20120521,0,518533.story

Housing’s Dead — Is It Time to Buy?

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BOSTON (The Street Ratings) — No one’s buying homes, never mind homebuilder stocks. Companies such as Pulte(PHM), DR Horton(DHI) and Lennar(LEN) may even be the most contrarian investment today.

The outlook for the housing market, as reported by the mass media, is not good. In case you’ve missed them, here are a few of the headlines from over the past several weeks:

“No recovery in sight for U.S. housing market”

“July real estate market fell short of expectation”

“Housing data shows sector is still weak”

To read the rest of the story, click here:

http://business-news.thestreet.com/berksmont-news/story/housings-dead-is-it-time-to-buy/11224534