The Peoria Area Association of Realtors says the third quarter home sales declined more than 4 percent. That was coupled with an 8.6 percent lower median sale price.
Tonya Burris is the president of the Association of Realtors. She says it’s a stable market, but does not reflect growth in sales. Burris says that’s because the inventory of homes has been smaller in 2013 than in the last three years.
“A healthy market is 5 to 6 months of inventory and we’ve been staying the last couple of months at about 6.6," Burris says. "Of course there’s a domino effect. So when we’ve got lower inventory, if we don’t have it we can’t sell it, and our inventory is down 18 percent from last year.”
Quarter to quarter the inventory of homes on the market was down 3 percent.
Burris says so far the partial government shutdown has not extended closing dates. But the continuation of the shutdown may cause closing dates for some home loans to take longer.