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Montgomery Home Prices A 7-Figure Shock
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Meanwhile, median prices -- the point at which half the homes are sold for more and half for less -- for townhouses as well as existing single-family detached homes remained stagnant this year.
In Montgomery, newly constructed townhouses were $505,462, and existing single-family detached homes were $540,000, modest declines from 2007. The median price for existing townhouses increased slightly, to $364,000.
Reflecting a housing market that has cooled nationally, the number of homes sold in the first quarter of 2007 fell compared with the same period in previous years. For example, 98 newly constructed, single-family detached homes were sold in the first quarter of 2007 compared with 195 in the first quarter of 2006, according to the report.
Still, officials said the report represents an alarming trend for Montgomery, a county that has some of the region's most expensive homes and where affordable housing is scarce.
County Council Member Marc Elrich (D-At Large) said developers are "catering to very, very high ends of the market."
"I think a lot of the folks in the other income brackets have been squeezed," Elrich said.
County Executive Isiah Leggett (D), who has decried the county's dwindling supply of affordable housing, expects a task force report this fall to outline ways the county can make inexpensive homes and apartments more available.
A combination of condo conversions and redevelopment in the county's more urban communities, such as Wheaton and Bethesda, have hampered efforts to keep mid-priced and low-cost housing available for rent and purchase.
Barbara Goldberg Goldman, who co-chairs Leggett's task force, said affordable housing in the county has reached "crisis proportions."
"We several years ago . . . claimed that we are approaching crisis proportions, and lo and behold, we are here," she said.
Montgomery now has more than 16,000 families on the waiting list for the federal government's housing choice program, which provides rental subsidies, said Tedi Osias, legislative director at Montgomery's Housing Opportunities Commission.
There are 4,500 more families on the county's public housing waiting list, she said.
"Frankly, long before the median price passed the $1 million mark, there's been a dire problem in Montgomery about how to make housing affordable for people who don't make a lot of money," Osias said.
Staff writers Miranda Spivack and Kristin Downey contributed to this report.
