St. Louis housing market had a strong 2015

Sales were up, prices were up and builders felt confident enough to construct the most houses in years. The minuses-as-pluses were the days homes stayed on the market unsold. Across much of the area, the number of days needed to sell a house fell by double-digit percentages.

Kirkwood is among the strong St. Louis submarkets.

“I always say that what happens in Kirkwood is a good barometer,” said Bob Bax, broker and co-owner of Berkshire Hathaway Alliance Real Estate, in Clayton.

Kirkwood, Bax said, has old and new homes and condos, plus a range of household incomes that produces a miniature view of the regional housing market.

Home sales last year in the Kirkwood School District totaled 653, up 13 percent from 2014, according to figures from Mid America Regional Information Systems, or MARIS. The average sale price ticked up 1.3 percent, to $364,492. The time a Kirkwood house sat on the market unsold fell 22 percent in 2015 to 43 days.

Other close-in suburbs, especially Clayton, have strong residential markets that are getting stronger.

“People love to live in the inner suburbs,” Bax said. “People would love a new home in these established neighborhoods.”

Real estate experts said this year’s stock market tumble had yet to hurt the housing market. Continued low interest rates keep mortgage costs low and provide an outlet for pent-up housing demand, the experts said.

“The confidence in the buyers to own real estate has been strong for the past two-plus years,” Bax said. “And now the sellers. Their confidence has increased substantially.”

Some homeowners who want to sell are sitting tight only because the low supply of available houses is complicating the task of finding their next house, he said.

Nationwide, year-over-year home prices grew by 6.3 percent in December, according to CoreLogic, a real estate data firm. CoreLogic predicted that home prices will increase by 5.4 percent this year.

“Nationally, home prices have been rising at a 5 to 6 percent annual rate for more than a year,” said Frank Nothaft, CoreLogic’s chief economist. “However, local-market growth can vary substantially from that.”

Naples, Fla., and metro Denver were among areas with double-digit price rises while those with price declines included New Orleans and Rochester, N.Y., Nothaft said.

Home prices in metro St. Louis rose by 3.8 percent in December, CoreLogic said.

That’s not to say the St. Louis housing market is stagnant.

In St. Louis County, the area’s largest submarket, 12,247 new and existing single-family homes put on the Multiple Listing Service sold in 2015. That number was up nearly 8.5 percent from 2014. Also up, by 4.4 percent, was the average sale price, to $244,412. The average number of days on the market was 47, a 24 percent plunge from the previous year.

St. Charles County, the area’s No. 2 submarket, had a 13 percent rise in sales, to 5,765 houses, and a 30 percent drop in time on the market, to 44 days. The average sale price of $222,007 was flat from 2014.

The city of St. Louis also had a strong 2015. Home sales rose by 11 percent, to 3,036. The downtown loft market had its best year since 2007. Sales were up, to 121 condos, compared with 181 in 2007. (The only higher year for downtown condo sales was 2006, when buyers snapped up 221 units.) The average 2015 condo sale price citywide was $203,868, up nearly 13 percent.

Rachel Boxdorfer, a Berkshire Hathaway Home Alliance agent, said South Hampton and Skinker-DeBaliviere were among St. Louis neighborhoods popular with buyers of single-family homes.

On Super Bowl Sunday, nearly 50 people attended an open house at a Skinker-DeBaliviere residence listed for $394,900. Boxdorfer said the house was already under contract to a couple offering to pay more than the asking price, if necessary, to fend off competing offers.

“Things in the city are moving incredibly fast right now,” she said.

Many city buyers are older homeowners downsizing or first-timers hunting bargains. Some houses, including a newly listed $149,900 starter home in South Hampton, go under contract within hours of hitting the market, Boxdorfer said.

In the suburbs, land suitable for building in high-demand areas is becoming scarce.

Jeff Thoele, general sales manager for Pulte Homes in St. Louis, said banks had sold developed lots they took back from builders devastated by the housing crash that began nearly a decade ago. Lenders eager to get those lots off their books often sold them for less than their development costs.

Builders who lost out on getting those lots are now pushing up home prices to cover the cost of streets and utilities in new subdivisions developed on bare ground.

“Now, really, the challenge is to find parcels that work and have the correct zoning,” Thoele said.

Atlanta-based Pulte, one of the few national builders present in the St. Louis area, has large subdivisions in western St. Charles County but also is focusing on small infill projects.

An example is the Woods of Ladue, a project of 20 homes at South Lindbergh Boulevard and Conway Road. Pulte’s project in Ladue is next to homes built in the 1960s. Thoele said Pulte began the project last year and was building homes on five of the eight lots sold so far.

Pulte sold about 120 houses last year in St. Louis and expects to push that number to 190 in 2016, Thoele said.

Realtor.com said the national residential market followed a typical January pattern of lower sales. Regardless, homes sold at a 4 percent faster rate than January 2015, the real estate data firm said.

“Our traffic, searches and listing views exhibited the January ‘pop’ we saw last year, which made for a strong spring,” Jonathan Smoke, Realtor.com’s chief economist, said in a statement. “All indicators point to this spring being the busiest since 2006 but we’ll need to see inventory grow more robustly this year to satisfy these buyers.”

Rising rents are prompting some apartment dwellers to consider buying a house, said Kim Hibbs, president of the Home Builders Association of St. Louis & Eastern Missouri.

Permits to build single-family home rose by 9 percent last year over 2014, to 3,874 permits in St. Louis, St. Charles, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln and Warren counties, plus the city of St. Louis.

“Last year was the healthiest market in seven years and certainly a reason for optimism,” said Hibbs, owner of Chesterfield-based Hibbs Homes. “We predict an ongoing steady increase through 2016 fueled by interest rates that are still historically very low despite the Federal Reserve’s recent actions.”

Bax said the belief that better times are here and will continue was now a big factor in the area housing market.

“It’s all about confidence levels,” he said. “I don’t see anything affecting confidence levels.”