Nationwide, housing declines. Oahu real estate bucks the trend.

NAR reported this morning that nationwide Housing markets continued to decline in August. The number of existing home sales dropped for the 13th straight month.

Sales fell 4.3 percent from July. Sales have fallen 12.8 percent since last August's pace of 6.31 million homes.

Lawrence Yun, senior economist for NAR, blamed the loss on the mortgage market crisis. "The unusual disruptions in the mortgage market, including a significant rise in jumbo loan rates, resulted in a fairly high number of postponed or cancelled sales, with many buyers having to search for other financing when loan commitments fell through," he said in a statement.

Some good news - prices broke a 12-month decline. The national median existing-home price for all housing types rose 0.2 percent to $224,500 in August from a year ago, when the median was $224,000.

Wow, I am so happy to be in Hawaii real estate and not anywhere else in the US. Although yesterday I was told that the market in NY is pretty great if you're in or near Manhattan. A friend of mine had to stand in line to buy a 1bedroom condo for about $550k. Amazing prices and markets in both Honolulu and NY!