While July Housing Data was dismal relative to both June and the year prior, August has pretty much held to those levels (i.e., the slide didn’t continue into the abyss). But the comparisons with August 2009 still look pretty desperate.

The Number of Closed Sales in August Were Just Slightly Below the Depressed July Numbers, but Down Significantly from August 2009

The number of Single Family Home Sales that closed in August across our top Forty Markets was down less than 1% versus July! But unit sales were down almost 17% when compared to August 2009.   Several City Markets actually had unit sales increases August versus July, and in two cities those up ticks were greater than 10% (i.e., Hartford CT and Augusta ME).  Honolulu and Pittsburgh lead the continuing downward trend in unit sales with double digit percentage decreases.

Surprisingly, Prices Held Steadily in Many Markets (and Overall)

At the same time, the Median Prices for Sold properties declined a little bit from July (about a 2% decline versus July’s prices).  But prices for Sold properties were still above August 2009 prices by a little more than 1%.   , and in fact climbed across our sample cities, albeit at a much slower rate.  The Median Price for Single Family Homes that sold in July 2010 actually increased by just ~0.1% over June and increased 2.1% versus July of 2009.  Des Moines had the largest month-on-month increase in prices (6.6%).  Few other cities saw increases above 2%.  Tulsa, Providence, Miami, Orlando and Atlanta all saw 7-9% declines in prices, the biggest drops in our Top Forty Market sample.