US existing home sales hit record for fifth straight year

Existing home sales in the United States totaled 7.072 million units in 2005, setting a record for the fifth consecutive year, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported Wednesday.

The sales reading for last year was up 4.2 percent from the 6.784 million homes and condominiums sold in 2004.

In the final month of last year, however, sales of previously-owned homes and condominiums fell by 5.7 percent from November. That was the third monthly decline in a row.

By region, existing home sales in December dropped by 11.4 percent in the West, 7.2 percent in the South and 2.6 percent in the Midwest. Sales in the Northeast kept unchanged.

The median price of an existing home, a typical market price where homes are sold half for more and half for less, was 211,000 in December. For all of 2005, existing home prices rose by 12.7 percent, the biggest advance since a 14.4 percent gain in 1979.

NAR's chief economist David Lereah believes that increases in home prices are expected to slow this year as sales drop by about six percent. This would represent a cooling housing market but not a collapse as some analysts had feared, he said.