HOUSTON —The Houston housing market continued to feel the effects of the troubled national economy in October, as well as residual problems caused by Hurricane Ike.

But new data released by the Houston Association of REALTORS® reflected that there has been some improvement from the city's poor market performance in September, when Ike derailed thousands of real estate transactions.

Even so, the number of property sales across the greater Houston area declined last month when compared to October 2007. Sales of single-family homes were down 20.1 percent, and he average price of a single-family home dipped 1.6 percent to $194,607 compared to $197,751 in October 2007.

Even though Houston’s housing market is slightly down, the city is faring better than many other U.S. markets. In fact, some cities have experienced depreciations of as much as 40 percent.
“Houston remains the envy of real estate professionals around the country,” said Michael Levitin, HAR chairman and principal of HTownRealty.com.