October housing numbers and negative equity

I’ll have two housing-related articles in the FLS over the next two days:

Tomorrow in the business section we’ll look at the October housing data for the area, which Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. released this morning. The area’s median sales price was $205,000, about where it’s been all year but the 35th-straight month in which prices have fallen year-over-year. There will be lots more data in the article tomorrow, but you can also check out this spreadsheet I keep that shows area housing data. 

On Thursday I’ll have an article that looks at the percentage of homes in the Washington area that are under water — those whose values are less than the mortgage total. About 30 percent of single-family mortgage holders in the Washington area — which includes Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Stafford and Fauquier — were under water as of Sept. 30. The data come from Zillow, which also made available this spreadsheet showing negative equity rates by metropolitan statistical area. 

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