In September, the Louisville, KY market saw a drop year-over-year in new home sales, a move downward following a gain in August 2011. New home sales saw a 57.9% drop from a year earlier to 32 after sales gained 13.8% in August from the year earlier.

A total of 644 new homes were sold during the 12 months that ended in September, down from 688 for the year that ended in August.

New home sales made up 3.2% of overall housing sales, less than the 8.1% of sales a year earlier. After dropping in August from a year earlier, sales of new and existing homes rose year-over-year in September.

The average price of new homes gained year-over-year 40.7% in September to $376,057 per unit. This hike is an improvement over the 21.2% rise in August year-over-year.

For newly sold homes, the average mortgage size climbed year-over-year along with new home prices. Average mortgage size grew 42.9% to $291,952 in September from a year earlier. Average mortgage size increased 30.3% in August 2011 from a year earlier. For new home sales, the percentage of the sale price that was being financed increased 1.2 percentage points year-over-year to 77.6% in September 2011.

As a share of new home sales, single-family home sales have climbed from last year while the share belonging to attached units has fallen. The share of new home sales belonging to single-family homes rose from 84.2% in September 2010 to 96.9% of sales in September 2011. Meanwhile, attached units as a percentage of all new home sales sank to 3.1% of sales from 15.8% of sales.

Foreclosures and real estate owned (REO) sales continued to decline from a year earlier in September, but did not look to be a burden on the market. Out of all existing home sales, foreclosures combined with REO sales represented 23.1% of sales, below 37.0% a year earlier. The percentage of existing home sales involving foreclosures fell to 11.1% in September from 17.1% a year earlier while REO sales as a percentage of existing home sales slipped to 12.0% from 19.9% a year earlier.

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