Iowa’s housing market is holding steady, while nationally a record number of foreclosures were posted in July.

Iowa home sales increased 4.5 percent from June, though the average price dropped 1.7 percent, according to the Iowa Association of Realtors (IAR) July 2009 Housing Trends report. When compared with July 2008 figures, Iowa home sales increased 0.8 percent to 3,480, while the average sale price of homes increased 0.1 percent to $148,692.

Terry Knapp, IRA president, said his organization is seeing a lot of first-time homebuyer activity this summer, which could be a reason for the slight drop in average sale price.

“First time home buyers typically buy more modestly priced homes,” he said in a release.

Homes averaged 103 days on the market in July, down three days from June, but up nine days from July 2008.

Foreclosure filings, meanwhile, were made on more than 360,000 properties nationally in July, an increase of 7 percent from June and 32 percent from a year earlier, CNNMoney.com reported. More than 87,000 properties were repossessed by lenders, bringing the year-to-date total to 464,058 repossessions.

One in every 355 U.S. homes had a filing in July, with Arizona (one of every 135) and Florida (one of every 154), hit the worst. Las Vegas topped the list of cities for the 31st consecutive month, with one filing for every 47 homes.