Quad-City home market bucks national trend

By Doug Schorpp
Quad-City Times | Saturday, October 13, 2007

While U.S. home prices continue to drop, the Quad-City market remains stable.

Gene Holst, chief executive officer for the Quad-City Area Realtor Association, said his figures show an overall increase of 3 percent since January. “That is up 1.7 percent from a year ago in July,” he said.

“Locally, we certainly have a stable market. We’re unlike many markets that had huge increases and have been corrected now. Our market has been stable. I don’t see us having a huge drop.”

Also announced Tuesday was a decline in August, for the sixth straight month, in sales of existing homes nationwide. The National Association of Realtors said sales of existing single-family homes dropped by 4.3 percent in August, compared to July.

Holst said results in the local market do not reflect nationwide trends. “The number of sales increased every month until July when it was slightly off,” he said.

For example, in August, numbers were down 1.3 percent compared to July.