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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.

While most housing market indicators have been tracking negative for months, Houston’s median home price for existing single-family housing is positively buoyant despite steady declines in sale volumes in recent months — the median price increased 1.5% in June 2008 when compared to last year. Houston’s residential real estate housing market sales were lower again in June 2008 with a year-to-year sales decline of 15.1% — the slowest June sales volume since 2004. Nationally, sales were down 15.5%. Sales declines were across most property and price classes with the single largest declines in homes priced between $80,000 and $200,000. Pending sales were down over 20% indicating that sales declines will continue. Inventory supply and DOM are up almost 10% in year-to-year comparisons.