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Good news for the housing market here in Baltimore.  Over 60 percent of the Baltimore region’s zip codes experienced sales increases in 2009.  This represents the first time since 2005 that buying rose overall.

Sales are on the increasing as first-time buyers take the plunge, prodded by a temporary $8,000 tax credit and also as property investors buy up foreclosed properties.

The market is quite different from the days of the infamous housing bubble, when prices were soaring and selling a home was easy.

Even four years since the credit crunch began, foreclosures are a huge issue and many people are still selling and absorbing a loss. Even though sales rose last year, average prices fell in most areas.

In half of our area’s zip codes, the decrease was greater than 10 percent. As a result, about 100,000 homeowners owed more on their mortgage loans than their houses were worth.  Still another 30,000 borrowers were teetering on the edge of being underwater.

It remains to be seen whether the sales increase will continue because several things could hurt progress, including unemployment levels, millions of Americans in danger of foreclosure and government plans to phase out some market supports.

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