February home sales up 19% from Jan.

But sellers are waiting an average of 100 days to find a buyer

By Teresa Truelsen

Local Realtors are upbeat about the prospects for 2008, despite a more than 31 percent drop in existing home sales over the first two months of 2007.

The silver lining in the decrease: Sales rose in February compared with January.

Kimberly Clifton, president of the Tucson Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service, said it is unfair to continue to compare with a year ago.

"We need to look at where we are now," Clifton said. "We're going to continue to compare to last month for the rest of this year."

The 710 units sold last month represented a 19 percent increase over January, which is a historically slower month, Clifton said. The number of homes on the market remained steady at about 9,100.

The number of days a home is on the market before it sells has steadily increased over the past 2 1/2 years. At its lowest point, homes were selling on average in less than a month - just 25 days in the summer of 2005. Now, home sellers are waiting nearly four times longer for a buyer.

Clifton said she doesn't see that changing.

"I do think it's going to take a longer amount of time to sell your home," she said.

Offering a presentable home at a fair price is the best way to make a sale. That means checking on recent sales of comparable homes and not relying on values from a year ago or more, Clifton said.

The median price of homes sold dropped more than $10,000, nearly 9 percent, from a year ago. The median is the point at which half the homes sold for more and half for less.

Clifton partly pegged the drop to a jump in "short" sales - sales of homes for less than the amount due on a mortgage.

And in this buyer's market, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has one more benefit for potential homeowners. The limits for FHA loans inr Pima County has increased to $316,250 from $239,850, with 3 percent down.