Wisconsin Home Sales Rise In July After June Decline

Wisconsin home sales rose in July after a sluggish start to the peak home-buying months.

On Monday, the Wisconsin Realtors Association reported 8,746 existing home sales last month, up 3 percent from the 8,489 sales in July 2018. That comes after a nearly 10 percent drop in year-to-year sales for June.

Economist David Clark of Marquette University said there was more good news on housing supply in the July report.

“New listings actually rose in July,” he said. “They didn’t go up by a lot — they went up by about 1.7 percent, but that’s certainly a welcome improvement, because we’d been seeing over the last couple years a consistent downward movement.”

The ongoing decline in the number of homes on the market has dampened sales and pushed up home prices. From this time last year, the median price of a home rose 6.8 percent in July to $205,000.

There’s been a long-term decline in the number of homes for sale in Wisconsin. Clark said that continues to push home prices higher.

“For actually the third month in a row we’ve had median prices statewide that are over $200,000,” he said. “We came in right at $205,000 for the median price statewide.”

Clark said the recent drop in interest rates has offset some of the increase in prices.

Total Wisconsin home sales for the first seven months of 2019 are down 3.8 percent from the same period last year.