Home sales up. Prices down. Newly signed contracts up, but not as big a year-over-year jump as we've been seeing -- thanks, blizzards.
Those are the housing-market basics for the Baltimore metro area last month. If you want more details along those lines, check out today's home sales story. Rather than retreading the same ground here, I thought I'd share a few other interesting stats:
25: Percentage of metro area homes that sold in 30 days or less.
33: Percentage that sold in 121 days or more.
38: Percentage of homes financed with loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration. (Long gone are the days when no one went FHA.)
20: Percentage of homes paid for entirely with cash. (Investors, usually.)
1,177: Homes that sold in the metro area last month, up nearly 10 percent from a year earlier.
1,757: Homes that sold in the metro area in February 2000, just to put things in perspective.
207: Homes that sold for $200,000 to $249,999 last month, the most popular price range.
114: Homes that sold for $500,000 or more. (Yes -- not that much more than half what sold in the low to mid $200s.)
10: Months it would take to find buyers for all the homes listed for $200,000 to $249,999 at February's pace of sales.
23: Months it would take for all the homes listed for $500,000-plus.
And finally, 56: Homes that sold for less than $30,000. Many, presumably, to those investors paying cash.
As always, the numbers come from Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. If you see other numbers there that fascinate you, do share.