Rome real estate agents closed on the sale of 66 homes in Floyd County during October, a 32-percent increase from the 50 homes sold in October of 2011. It’s the seventh month this year that sales numbers have increased compared to the corresponding month a year ago.

Perhaps even more significant is the whopping $57,000 increase in the average sale price as compared to a year ago. The average for the 66 closings last month was $147,126, compared to $90, 281 in October of 2011.

“That is the second highest closing volume that we have had this year. That is in part due to movement in the upper end of the market,” said Greater Rome Board of Realtors President Jason Free. “There were seven houses over $300,000 that closed, and one of those was over a million.”

Free admits that the average sales price was inflated somewhat by the one home that sold for $1.2 million.

He said that if that deal were taken out of the picture, the average sales price would still have been in excess of $132,000.

Debra McDaniel, an agent with Toles, Temple and Wright, said she has had her best year in real estate in about seven years.

“But I’ve had to sell three times more volume to make the same amount of money I made seven or eight years ago,” McDaniel said.

Free, an agent with Keller Williams Realty, said that he personally tracks about eight indicators each month. He said that for the first time this year all eight of his indicators are trending in a positive direction for October.

The number of closing was up, bringing the total for the year to 680. That’s up from 566 through the month of October last year, a healthy increase of 20.2 percent.

New listings are also up, pending sales are up almost 19 percent as compared to a year ago, the number of active listings was lower than a year ago, the average number of days on market dropped to 179, and new foreclosures are also down.

Free said that while foreclosures are still too high, it is a positive factor that the banks are not flooding the market with distressed properties, which has the impact of holding home values down.

McDaniel said no one ever thought you’d be able to buy a three-bedroom home in Garden lakes for $50,000.

“When I first started with investors we were getting them in the 30s,” McDaniel said. “They’re snatching them up because there are so many people looking to lease that can’t buy. Most of my investors now have tenants waiting.”