Forbes Magazine lists Philadelphia as having one of the biggest increases in home sales from July 07 to July 08. The magazine says sales jumped 57% due to plummeting home prices spurred by high foreclosure rates. Forbes says “Philadelphia has had by far the steepest increase in home sales, with transactions more than doubling from the same time the previous year.” While this may be good for home buyers it’s bad for those who lost their homes.

The source for the new figures comes from a report released by Radar Logic, a New York City-based real estate data and analytics company, which analyzed a sampling of homes in 25 of the country’s major metropolitan areas.

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But there is one caveat, Michael Feder, Radar’s president and CEO, warns the story  not to put too much from the sharp rise in percentage of transactions for that city adding “It can mean that there’s a more stable market in Philadelphia,” he says. “But sometimes a county will go dark for a month and not file any data from public records sources. Philadelphia is not wonderful in terms of this. So there are not necessarily a lot more transactions there.”

So, on one hand, the report says, prices have dropped and sales are up, but then maybe not. Does anyone have any first hand knowledge of the housing market in Philly? Is it a buyers market out there? If there are any real estate agents reading this, please share with us your experience of what is happening.