Home Sales Rise in Quarter; Off 4.3% for Year

Sales of existing homes, responding to lower interest rates and weaker prices in some areas, rose 2.1% during the fourth quarter of 1989 but were still down 4.3% for the year, a real estate trade group said today.

The National Assn. of Realtors said sales totaled a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.85-million units during the October-December period.

Sales for the year, which were buffeted in the first half by double-digit mortgage interest rates, fell to 3.78-million units from 3.95 million in 1988. After rates peaked in March and dropped into the single digits in July, sales perked up in the final two quarters.

Realtors President Norman D. Flynn said the 1990 housing market is expected to be much like 1989--strong in some areas, average in others and sluggish in parts of the nation where the economy is weak.

Sales include single-family detached homes, townhouses, apartment condominiums and cooperatives.

The realtors said the national median price of existing homes rose 4.6% to $92,800 during the fourth quarter of 1989 and were up 4.3%, to $93,100, for the year. The median means half of the homes cost more and half cost less.

Honolulu had the highest fourth-quarter median price for a home, $280,900, compared with $47,200 in Peoria, Ill.

Three California areas held the top median prices in the quarter. The San Francisco Bay Area was second with a $260,600 median price, followed by Orange County, $247,900, and Los Angeles, $217,000.

Twenty-nine states had sales increases in the fourth quarter, ranging from a 0.9% gain in Hawaii to a 30.5% hike in Vermont.

Only the Northeast and the Midwest posted sales growths below the national average of 2.1% in the October-December period. Sales were down 2.6% in the Northeast to an annual rate of 701,000 units while they rose 1% to 1.04-million units in the Midwest.

Sales were up 2.8% to an annual rate of 1.45 million in the South and 8.2% to 660,000 in the West, the realtors said.

The West also had the biggest jump in median prices, a 9% advance to $141,600, in the fourth quarter. It was followed by gains of 5.9% to $71,700 in the Midwest, 4.3% to $83,100 in the South and 0.9% to $144,000 in the Northeast.