Sales of existing homes in the United States fell in 41 states during the April-June quarter, a real estate trade group reported. The new figures from the National Association of Realtors, which also showed home prices were down in one-third of the metropolitan areas surveyed, appeared to underscore the continued severity of the U.S. housing slump. However, Realtors officials noted that existing home prices were up in 97 of the 149 metropolitan areas surveyed compared with the sales prices of a year ago. That represented price gains for 65 percent of the areas surveyed, an improvement from the first quarter of this year when only about 55 percent of the metropolitan areas reported such price gains. In the fourth quarter of last year, less than half of the metropolitan areas reported price gains. The states suffering the biggest drop in sales in the second quarter, compared to the same period a year ago, were Florida, down 41.3 percent, and Nevada, down 37.5 percent. Six states actually showed sales increases during the second quarter while one state had unchanged sales and there was incomplete data for two states, the Realtors reported. Nationwide, sales of existing homes totaled 5.91 million units at an annual rate in the second quarter, down 10.8 percent from the sales pace of the second quarter of 2006. The national median sales price in the second quarter was $223,800, down 1.5 percent from a median price in the spring of 2006.
