Miami Home Sales Fall from Previous Year, Luxury Market Rises

While Miami home sales in April fell slightly, the multimillion-dollar luxury home market experienced a 36.5 percent increase from both the month before and previous year, according to San-Diego based ""DataQuick"":http://www.dataquick.com/.

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In April, 101 homes sold for more than $2 million or more. During the first four months of 2012, 286 homes sold for the same amount or more, up 14.4 percent from the same period in 2011.

Miami-area home sales rose modestly in April compared with March but fell slightly short of the year-ago level, as sales continued to drop for homes priced below $200,000.

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In the overall Miami market, the median price paid for all new and resale houses and condos sold in April was $140,000 - the highest for any month since November 2010. The April median rose 3.7 percent from $134,950 the month before and rose 12 percent from $125,000 a year earlier.

Also in April, 9,752 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in the metro area encompassing Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward counties. That was up 2.2 percent from the prior month and down 0.2 percent from a year earlier.

The month's total sales were 14.5 percent below the average number of sales in the month of April since 1997. However, if newly built homes are excluded from the sales mix, then the number of houses and condos that closed escrow in April was just 1.0 percent below the historical average for the month.

The region's new-home sales were the lowest on record for April and nearly 78 percent below average for the month.

Meanwhile, use of a form of low-down-payment financing that's popular with first-time homebuyers - government-insured FHA loans - inched up in April to 36.1 percent of all home purchase loans from 35.2 percent in March, but down from 40.4 percent a year earlier.

The March and April figures are the lowest since late 2008.