Condo prices, sales booming in U.S. [View All]

[ringmastery]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20040217/bs_usatoday/condosalesoutrunafastmarket

Condominiums, the long-suffering stepchild of the U.S. housing market, have come of age. In big cities and across the Sun Belt, condo sales are booming, and prices are up smartly.

For many, condos conjure an image of cramped living, high-priced parking and mettlesome building associations.

But they're hot because they're still affordable, and they meet the demands of baby boomers and Generation X buyers for low maintenance and convenient, hip, urban locations. They've moved in the last few years from laggard to leader in a national housing market that took off a decade ago and has been kept strong by high demand and low mortgage rates.

For the first time, the price midpoint for condos in the final quarter of 2003 topped that of detached single-family homes - $174,700 vs. $171,600, the National Association of Realtors has reported. Sales volume is growing faster than that of single-family homes and is closing in on 1 million units per year, NAR says.