The Nashville, TN market saw an increase in sales of new homes in November year-over-year, and the percentage hike was higher than October 2011, implying the market may be improving. New home sales saw a rise of 15.0% from the year earlier to 292 after sales rose 6.2% in October from the year earlier.

A total of 3,279 new homes were sold during the 12 months that ended in November, up from 3,241 for the year that ended in October.

Of the total number of sales, new home sales made up 13.2%. A year ago, 12.9% of total sales were new home sales. For new and existing homes, sales increased year-over-year in November after also increasing in October year-over-year.

The average per-unit price of new homes rose in November to $268,948, up by 7.4% from a year earlier. This is an upward shift from the 2.4% decline in October from a year earlier.

For newly sold homes, average mortgage size moved from $220,764 in November 2010 to $222,838 in November 2011. In October 2011, average mortgage size increased 2.9% from a year earlier. Of the overall sale price, the percentage that was being financed declined 5.3 percentage points year-over-year to 82.9% in November 2011. This came after a 4.6 percentage point rise in October from a year earlier.

As a share of new home sales, single-family home sales have climbed from last year while the share belonging to attached units has fallen. The share of new home sales belonging to single-family homes jumped from 94.1% in November 2010 to 95.9% of sales in November 2011. At the same time, the share of new home sales belonging to attached units sank to 4.1% of sales from 5.9% of sales.

Foreclosures and real estate owned (REO) sales remained a drag on the market. Together, foreclosures plus REO sales accounted for 40.2% of existing home sales. In November 2010, they made up 46.7%. The percentage of existing home sales involving foreclosures went from 26.0% in November 2010 to 26.6% in November 2011 and REO sales as a percentage of existing home sales slipped to 13.6% from 20.8% a year earlier.

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