The Tulsa, OK market saw a rise in new home sales in October year-over-year, but the percentage rise, which was less than September 2011, seemed to suggest market leveling. New home sales saw a 3.4% rise from a year earlier to 120. This followed a 23.2% climb year-over-year in September.

A total of 1,359 new homes were sold during the 12 months that ended in October, up from 1,355 for the year that ended in September.

As a percentage of overall housing sales, new home sales accounted for 13.0%. This is better than the 11.6% of sales a year earlier. Following a year-over-year increase in September, sales of new and existing homes fell year-over-year in October.

In October, the average price for new homes was $196,233, an 8.5% decline from last year. This decline is a reversal from a 1.5% rise in September year-over-year.

Average mortgage size on new homes sank year-over-year in contrast to new home prices. The average mortgage size declined to $165,131 in October, marking a 19.1% drop compared with last year. In September 2011, average mortgage size remained level from a year earlier at $201,242. Of the overall sale price, the percentage that was being financed dropped 11.0 percentage points year-over-year to 84.2% in October 2011.

Sales of attached units, as a percentage of new home sales, have risen from last year while sales of single-family homes have slumped. Attached unit sales rose from no part of all sales in October 2010 to 1.7% of sales in October 2011. Conversely, the share belonging to single-family homes sank to 98.3% of sales from all of sales.

There was an 11.2% fall year-over-year in the average unit size of newly sold homes to 2,206 square feet in October 2011. A decrease in both the average size and price of newly sold homes was also seen in September 2011 when the average size rose 7.9% to 2,166 square feet.

Foreclosures and real estate owned (REO) sales decreased in October from a year earlier, but stayed a drag on the market. Out of all existing home sales, foreclosures combined with REO sales represented 31.4% of sales, below 44.0% a year earlier. The percentage of existing home sales involving foreclosures fell to 16.3% in October from 30.6% a year earlier while REO sales as a percentage of existing home sales increased to 15.1% from 13.4%.

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