April MLS Sales Statistics

1. April MLS Sales Statistics The April 2013 MLS statistics will be released on Tuesday morning, and here are some quick takeaways: • Single-family home sales rose for the 23rd straight month in April, increasing 27.2 percent year-over-year. • Contracts closed on 6,482 homes, shrinking inventory to 3.4 months, which is the lowest supply of homes on the market in some 13 years. • Pricing achieved historic highs during the month, with the single-family home median price reaching $184,900 while the average price was $253,907. • Total dollar volume soared to $1.9 billion, a 46 percent increase over April 2012, when total dollar volume was $1.3 billion. • For more detailed information, please visit the HAR Online Newsroom for this and all other news releases.

2. NAR Mid-Year Recap • At its May 18 meeting during the wrap-up of the 2013 NAR Mid-Year Legislative Conference Washington, the NAR Board of Directors approved a modification to MLS Policy Statement 7.57 to provide additional guidance on the categorization of programs, products, and services as "core," "basic," or "optional" services. • The new policy allows MLSs to categorize the establishment, maintenance, and promotion of public-facing websites as a basic MLS service. • As part of the modification, MLSs cannot change any services they now offer as "optional," such as lockboxes or advertising programs, into "basic" services if they or their shareholders receive an economic benefit from the service.  • The board also expressed a commitment to enhancing and broadening the user experience of Realtor.com in response to evolving consumer needs and expectations and authorized the Leadership Team to work with realtor.com to develop recommendations for achieving this goal. The Board will convene in closed session in July to review those recommendations. • More information about the NAR conference is here: http://bit.ly/17PIVhG

3. Weekly HAR Market Statistic The latest weekly report for the Houston real estate market provides a snapshot that supports trends tracked through the MLS and reported in HAR’s monthly summary for April. We see a relatively small increase in new listings while closed sales rise again and pending sales rocket higher, suggesting continued strong sales activity and depletion of inventory in May. In the Houston region, for the week ending May 12: • New Listings increased 7.4% to 2,482 • Pending Sales increased 40.3% to 2,282 • Closed Sales increased 11.3% to 1,333

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