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Baltimore leads nation in distressed home sales

WASHINGTON — Distressed home sales, including foreclosures and short sales, hit an 11-year low nationwide in the second quarter, but two Maryland cities are among those left behind.

In Baltimore, 20.7 percent of home sales in the second quarter were distressed sales, the highest percentage in the nation among cities with a metropolitan area population of 1 million or more.

Philadelphia, New York, Cleveland and Providence, Rhode Island, all had distressed sales of between 19 percent and 20 percent.

Among all 148 metropolitan areas Attom Data Solutions analyzed for distressed sales, Hagerstown, Maryland, ranks in the top five, at 22.1 percent.

And, while Attom Data Solutions says median selling prices nationwide in the second quarter rose to prerecession levels in 65 markets, the median prices in Salisbury, Maryland, was still 21 percent below the 2005 peak, ranking it in the top five among markets still far from previous highs.

The housing market continues to suffer from a lack of homes on the market for sale, and the Attom Data Solutions quarterly report finds one culprit.

Homeowners who sold in the second quarter had owned their homes for an average of 8.09 years, an all-time high for homeownership tenure.

Those who did sell, did well.

Average home seller gains increased to the highest level since the third quarter of 2007, with a 30.2 percent return on the original purchase price.

America 250: How people ordered their ready-to-assemble homes from a catalog

For decades, Americans could browse a catalog, choose a home and order it by mail. Sears, Roebuck and Company was a prominent manufacturer of mail-order homes. The company sold about 70,000 to 75,000 homes from 1908 to 1940, according to the Sears Archives. Its catalogs offered more than 400 different house styles and the listed prices could range from around $200 to $6,000. Customers even had the option of designing their own home and submitting the blueprint to Sears.
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