In October, there was a drop year-over-year in new home sales in the Dover, DE market, and there were hints of worsening market conditions as the percentage decline was steeper than September 2011. Sales sank 44.0% from a year earlier to 28. This came on the heels of a 2.0% decline year-over-year in September.

A total of 469 new homes were sold during the 12 months that ended in October, down from 491 for the year that ended in September.

Out of all housing sales, new home sales represented 19.9%. This is down from the a year earlier when new home sales accounted for 45.9% of total sales. Following a year-over-year increase in September, sales of new and existing homes also rose year-over-year in October.

In October, the average price of newly sold homes dipped year-over-year to $240,175 per unit, marking a 3.8% decline from the year-earlier figure. This decline is larger than the 1.9% decline in September from a year earlier.

In contrast to new home prices, there was an increase year-over-year in the average mortgage size on newly sold homes. It increased to $163,689 in October, a 22.5% hike. Average mortgage size declined 2.0% in September 2011 from a year earlier. For new home sales, the percentage of the sale price that was being financed grew 14.6 percentage points year-over-year to 68.2% in October 2011. This comes after the figure remained relatively unchanged at 56.5% in September 2011.

The share of new home sales made up by attached units has risen while the share belonging to single-family homes has fallen. The share of new home sales belonging to attached units gained from 16.0% of sales in October 2010 to 17.9% of sales in October 2011. Meanwhile, single-family home sales as a percentage of all new home sales slid to 82.1% of sales from 84.0% of sales.

The average unit size of newly sold homes declined 24.3% year-over-year to 1,964 square feet in October 2011.

Foreclosures and real estate owned (REO) sales continued to rise in October from a year earlier and remained a burden on the market. Together, foreclosures plus REO sales made up 70.8% of existing home sales, up from 42.4% a year earlier. The percentage of existing home sales involving foreclosures rose to 52.2% in October from 30.5% a year earlier while REO sales as a percentage of existing home sales increased to 18.6% from 11.9%.

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