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Today’s Houston real estate asking prices are derived from local market conditions based on comparable sales prices paid by home buyers in a particular neighborhood. Despite recent sales volume declines, prices are holding steady across Houston. While that may not be true for all Houston area neighborhoods, there hasn’t been an overall 15% drop in Houston home values. The housing supply is growing — tending to favor home buyers — but it hasn’t increased enough to force home sellers into large double-digit price reductions.

A Houston Chronicle Real Estate discussion posted a few weeks ago asked if Realtors share blame for the mortgage crisis unwinding across the country. Citing dual-licensed Realtors (those holding real estate and mortgage brokers licenses) as part of the problem, some forum participants pointed to the potential conflict of interest between real estate and mortgage brokerage as a reason for the mortgage crisis, while others stated that dual-licensed Realtors couldn’t adequately perform both jobs as agent and mortgage broker. Both could be valid points — yet, the number of Realtors holding a both a real estate and mortgage license isn’t large enough to have contributed to the mortgage crisis in a significant way.

Hurricane Ike’s impact on local housing sales was dramatic — power outages and property damages forced the postponement of real estate closings across the area. Houston’s residential real estate housing market sales were down significantly in September 2008 with a year-to-year sales decline of 29.5% — the lowest September sales volume in years. Nationally, sales for existing homes were up 5.57% in September.

Markets across the US experienced home price declines of up to 20% or more, while Houston’s median home price for existing single-family housing made modest gains throughout the current year. In September, the median price increased again — jumping 5% in year-to-year comparisons from $150,000 to $157,500. For the US market, the median home price declined 9.0% from $210,500 to $191,600 in year-to-year comparisons.