morphemic thule: Charleston market report, July 2012

Friday, August 17, 2012

Charleston market report, July 2012 | Charleston Real Estate ...

There is continuing?good news in July with home?sales higher, inventory lower and prices improving.

Normally, I?ll wait until the beginning of the year to make a change to the format of the Charleston real estate market report but it just seemed like a good time now to cut some of the ?fat? out of the report and what you?ll notice is a change in the Year over Year comparison where I deleted the column for the average sales to list percentage which is generally around 95 percent for all homes, homes selling under $300k and homes selling between $300k and $600k. When you get to the luxury Charleston real estate market of homes selling for more than $600k, the percentage generally runs around 90 percent on average since there is generally a little more flexibility in that price range.

But more importantly, I totally deleted the chart that gave a running comparison for each month of the year and incorporated the current monthly data into the Year over Year comparison so now you?ll see how the current 12 month period compares to the prior 12 month period as you always did but also how the current month compares to the same month in the prior year. I hope you like the change for the better.

Speaking of better, how about home prices. You?ll see nice improvement in home prices on both an average and median basis for homes selling for less than $300,000 and since that represents?75 percent of the Charleston housing market, prices also are higher when looking at all Charleston homes. Interestingly, while sales continue to remain strong in the move-up $300k to $600k range and in the luxury market of homes selling over $600k, prices there are mostly flat. Don?t forget that the median and average price are greatly impacted by the mix of homes sold and since there has been fewer foreclosures lately, that puts less downward pressure on pricing.

The big worry by those few who are still negative on the housing market is the fear that a massive shadow inventory is going to flood the market and drive prices lower. And while there are some additional distressed homes in the pipeline, there is significant improvement in the number of homeowners who are delinquent and the number of homeowners?who are underwater and will just mail in their keys. So don?t expect a flood of distressed property to hit the market anytime soon.

I hope you enjoy the new format and even better, the very good looking Charleston housing market?trends you can view in?the charts below.

Statistics compiled by Howard Arnoff using the?Charleston MLS as the source of data, information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.