Home Price Reductions Surge in Hard-Hit Markets

According to a monthly review of multiple listing services (MLSs) in 26 major U.S. markets conducted by[IMAGE]

the national online real estate brokerage ""ZipRealty"":http://www.ziprealty.com/, home sellers in Las Vegas, Phoenix, and South Florida continued to slash prices in March in hopes of attracting buyers.

While the number of ""for sale"" homes in Las Vegas declined by more than 6 percent from February to March, the median price reduction increased to $24,000, a month-to-month jump of $1,000.

[COLUMN_BREAK]

Areas with the largest percentage of price reductions included Jacksonville, Florida (50.3 percent); Phoenix (50.1 percent); and Orlando, Florida (47.2 percent).

In addition, Miami, where the median price reduction was $33,000, had the largest price reduction percentage of 14.16 percent.

National data showed a different story, though.

The national median price reduction declined 3.02 percent to $20,200 from February to March. And during the same period, the median list price of homes reviewed by ZipRealty increased by 1.07 percent to $263,754.

Markets with the lowest percentage of price-reduced MLS-listed homes were Denver (28.9 percent), San Francisco (32.3 percent), and San Diego (33.9 percent).

The percentage of reduced ""for sale"" homes declined slightly to 40.35 percent in March. But due to an increase in total inventory, the number of price reduced homes jumped to 243,225, up from 230,238 in February.