State home prices stay firm amid fall
State home prices stay firm amid fall

By Richard Mize

Published: May 23, 2008

Oklahoma home values remained firm amid the national cascade of tumbling prices, according to federal statistics released Thursday.

Oklahoma City home values slipped slightly in the first quarter and Tulsa home values edged up — less than 1 percent for both — but both cities outperformed the nation as a whole in yearly comparisons, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.

Oklahoma City home values slipped 0.34 percent in the first quarter, but posted an increase of 2.54 percent compared with the first quarter of 2007, the agency said.

Tulsa home values inched up 0.69 percent in the first quarter and increased 3.32 percent on the year, the agency said.

The statistics were part of the agency's latest quarter Home Price Index, which actually tracks purchase prices and refinance appraisals. Nationally, the index fell 0.2 percent over the first quarter and was flat over the year.

Also nationally, the agency's purchase-only index — which does not consider refinance appraisals — showed a 1.7 percent decline from the fourth quarter of last year to the first quarter of this year. The purchase-only index fell 3.1 percent on the year, the largest drop in the purchase-only index's 17 years.

Purchase-only values for the same periods were not available for the state or for individual metropolitan statistical areas. However, the numbers appear to be in line with first-quarter statistics from the Oklahoma Association of Realtors.

Statewide, home prices rose 3.5 percent in the first three months of this year compared with the first quarter of 2007, but declined less than 1 percent from the last quarter of last year, the Realtors reported earlier this month.

A market that logs a change of less than 1 percent over three months is considered stable, especially in light of accelerating declines in home values in many parts of the country, said Lisa Yates, chief executive of the Oklahoma Association of Realtors.

The annual comparison, however — the 2.54-percent rise in Oklahoma City and 3.32-percent increase in Tulsa — "confirm what we have been saying,” she said.

"Oklahoma continues to see slow and steady growth,” Yates said. "Whether you are looking at the state as a whole or the Oklahoma City or Tulsa markets individually, the first quarter indicated a less than half-percent change in the market, which shows the housing market is stable here.”

"Steady” was also the way lender David Feisal interpreted the new numbers.

"Oklahoma continues to rank in the top 10 states in the country for housing appreciation,” said Feisal, senior vice president of Tulsa-based SpiritBank and immediate past president of the Oklahoma Mortgage Bankers Association.

"Our steady growth is sustainable in an economy that continues to outperform the national economy as a whole. Energy continues to be a driving force in the Oklahoma economy and agriculture and aerospace are continuing to do well,” he said.

The new numbers are from the first quarter. Since then, home buyer interest, and sales, have picked up, especially after Forbes "zapped the market” earlier this month, said Keith Taggart, an attorney and broker who runs the Marolyn Pryor Realtors office at 7250 Northwest Expressway, Suite 200.

Forbes.com called Oklahoma City the most recession-proof city in the nation, partly because it has "one of the country's strongest housing markets.”

The median home price increased here 8.2 percent between fourth quarter 2006 and fourth quarter 2007, Forbes.com reported, citing figures from the National Association of Realtors.

Taggart said activity at all of Marolyn Pryor's real estate offices — in Mustang, Yukon, Tuttle, Moore and Oklahoma City — picked up when the Forbes story spread like lightning across the metro area.

The story came at the start of the traditional spring home-buying season, said Victoria Caldwell, a RE/MAX broker-owner in Oklahoma City and Edmond and vice president of MLSOK.com, the metro Realtors' multiple listing service.

She said she expected the drop to be larger than it was since "the first quarter is always the slowest quarter of the year.”

Caldwell also said that including refinance appraisals in the Home Price Index probably is pushing the index down, since the inflated appraisals that helped push home values up everywhere are in the past. Now, she said, some gun-shy appraisers are turning in appraisals that seem too low for the "real market.”

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