Local housing market's inventory stays in comfort zone

For all the caterwauling over the shape of the housing market, 2006's sales figures must be pretty harsh, right?

Somebody throw a boot at those noisy cats. Sales actually were up last year in the Oklahoma City area — up, not down — compared with 2005, although only by the tiniest amount.

"Flat” is the best way to put it. But the conventional wisdom is that housing is in trouble and the sky is falling.

The numbers suggest, rather, that housing, definitely in trouble in some parts of the country, held its own in central Oklahoma in 2006, despite the gnashing of teeth that accompanied bleak national housing news and the abrupt slowdown that hit here toward the end of the year.

Metro-area Realtors handled the sale of 20,391 single-family homes last year.

The statistically insignificant increase of 0.1 percent was emotionally significant for people in the housing industry, said Victoria Caldwell, president of the Oklahoma City Metro Association of Realtors.

"It's going to be nice news,” said Caldwell, a partner in Dominion Group, which owns RE/MAX First in Edmond and RE/MAX Associates in Oklahoma City.

Other sets of 2006 numbers are pretty nice, too, considering the flat year-to-year comparison in sales:

•The value of homes sold last year was $2.95 billion, compared with $2.78 billion in 2005, a 6.1 percent increase.

•The average price was $144,252 last year, compared with $136,352 in 2005, an increase of 5.8 percent.

•The median price, seen as more meaningful gauge because half sold for more and half sold for less, was $122,725, compared with $116,643 in 2005, a jump of 5.3 percent.

The closest thing to a dark cloud was the year-end housing inventory. Last year ended with a 4.8-month supply of houses on the market, up from a four-month supply at the end of 2005, according to tabulations by The Oklahoman, using Realtors' statistics.

Even the housing inventory is positive, since it has fallen from a near six-month supply at the end of November. Caldwell said it shows that "lots of people want to participate in this market” by selling one house to buy another while mortgage rates, which averaged 6.28 percent last year, are still at historic lows.

The slowdown was real, but only in certain areas of the metro area and only for homes at certain price ranges.

Anything listed for $250,000 and up "was a nightmare,” said Kathy Sparger, a Realtor with Century 21-Goodyear Green's office in Edmond.

In Edmond, where prices trend higher than the metro area as a whole, houses listed for $300,000 and more were difficult to move, she said.

Across all price ranges, Sparger said, Realtors "had to do a lot more negotiating.”

Home builders, likewise, appear already to be shaking off the dead-of-winter doldrums that came with a reduction in activity in 2006.

Builders in Oklahoma City, Edmond, Midwest City, Moore and Norman obtained 5,374 single-family permits in 2006, down 14.8 percent from 2005, according to The Oklahoman's monthly survey.

The drop was similar in the wider area followed by the Central Oklahoma Home Builders Association: 6,479 permits last year, down 15.2 percent from 2005. The area includes rural Oklahoma County, Yukon, Mustang, Choctaw, El Reno, Piedmont, Blanchard, Newcastle and Tuttle.

"Based on metro job growth projections and the buildup of inventory in select pockets around the metro (area), I expect new home permits to be about the same in 2007 as they were in 2006. Maybe even a bit lower,” said Vernon McKown, president of sales for Ideal Homes, based in Norman. "That doesn't mean it's a bad market, though. Keeping it in perspective, 2006, though much lower than 2005, was still the third-best year for housing starts in Oklahoma City over the past 20 years.”

Some consumers, as w