If you are a sunset person, then you will love Lake Norman.  Every evening offers a unique version of the photo above which I took recently at one of my waterfront listings.  Sometimes they offer a stunning contrast of the colors of a brilliant fire reflected in a dark layer of glass like this one.  Other times our sunset are soft pastel pinks, blues and yellows:

I have a special group of tools with me at all times when showing waterfront properties one of which is a tape measure to see how deep the water is at the dock and the other is a compass to determine exactly where the sun rises and sets. Some waterfront home-buyers definitely want sunsets while others want to avoid the afternoon sun and prefer sunrises.  With 520 miles of shoreline and myriad peninsulas, Lake Norman offers plenty of options for either of the above and everything in between!

To make your desktop calendar, go to the round button at the top of this site’s home page entitled: “Lake Norman Calendar”. Click on this button and up will come this image of my Lake Norman photo wallpaper calender for May 2012. All you have to do is right click and select “set as background”. If you would like a copy of this photo without the calendar, just send me an email.

FREE $25 GAS CARD!

I need your HELP!  I would love to use one of your favorite photos depicting life here in Lake Norman.  (Optimum size is a landscape photo about 2MB or about 1600 x 1200 pixels). I will give a $25 Gas Card to anyone who provides a photo that I use as one of my monthly calendars.  If you’d like to submit a photo  or an idea for a future calendar, please send it to…

diane@dianeaurit.com

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I got a call yesterday from a potential buyer for one of my listings.  He told me he would like me to present an all cash offer of $350,000 for a property I just listed at $429,000.  With a little prodding I was able to find out that he hadn’t seen the home and didn’t know the neighborhood.  I tried to explain a bit about the price and comps and his response was “it is a terrible real estate market and that’s all I need to know”.  REALLY?

Needless to say, my client’s counter to this buyer was not accepted.

This is just one example of how not to be successful in our current Lake Norman housing market. While it is quite common for investors and low-ballers to make these kind of offers when a new listing comes on the market, I have to wonder what these buyers are thinking?  Or, are they thinking at all?  Even banks get disgusted with these types of buyers.  Here is a great example:

A Lake Norman waterfront foreclosure was listed a few months ago for $399,000.  I had an interested buyer so I spoke with the listing agent.   At that time, the bank had already received and turned down several very low offers from investors and it was clear that both the listing agent and the bank were frustrated with these buyers.  My buyer decided to wait.  Over a period of several months the price was lowered twice.  Finally, they lowered it to $329,000.  My buyer quickly made an offer of $305,000 and it was accepted just before multiple offers were coming in.  Clearly, if my buyer had made an offer of $305,000 when it was originally listed it would not have been as well received.

I had a buyer a while back who wanted to make an offer of $800,000 on a home listed at $1,189,000 because he heard the sellers might be desperate to sell.  I knew the comparable sales would not justify anything even close to this price but my buyer felt that if “your throw out enough of these offers eventually one will stick”.  But seriously, if the seller was that desperate wouldn’t they have lowered the price to get multiple offers?  This kind of thinking is truly irrational.  This property just closed for $1,100,000.

I have sold and continue to sell some incredible bargains on Lake Norman but I try to counsel and educate my buyers:

• Timing is everything.  Develop a relationship with the listing agent, especially of foreclosures and shortsales, so that you will know when the sellers are ready to work with a lower offer.
• Do your homework!  I always do a complete market analysis and research the history of any property for my buyers before they make an offer.  We will know how long it has actually been on the market, how many price reductions, what their loan amount is and if there are any signs of distress like a notice of default, a divorce, etc.

There was a recent article in the Los Angeles Times “Low-ball Offers Decline in Some Housing Markets” April 22, 2012 which stated “For home buyers who still think they have a chance of hitting it lucky with a low-ball offer, they’re finding in many markets that their offers are more often being rejected or countered closer to the original asking price.”  In my opinion this is an accurate description of our current Lake Norman real estate market.  Be smart!

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It is important to note that these numbers are only as good as the agents who report them. Expect an adjustment in our 57 sales in February upward perhaps two more sales by the end of the month since it takes some Realtors several weeks to actually input their sales into our MLS.  I create these reports early in the month while the information is still very fresh so always pad the sales upward just a bit.

Here are the February 2012 numbers from our Charlotte Multiple Listing Service for our Lake Norman area real estate market:

Some significant additional interesting statistics for you:

• “Distressed sales” ( Foreclosures (REOS), defaults, Short Sales) comprised 21% of our closed sales in February down from 31% last month,  36.7% in December, 36% in November, 19.8% in October, 10% in September, 16.8 in August,  18.5%  in July,  25% in June and 27% in May. The US average is 24%. The price range of these distressed sales was$40,500 – $350,100 with NO waterfront homes included.  And, our percentage of distressed active listings dropped to a new low of 7.4 % down from 9.5% last month and 10.9 % in December which indicates that our ratio of distressed new listings is actually decreasing.  We are not being bombarded by foreclosures and shortsales so far in 2012 as some had predicted.
• 32% of our closed sales were waterfront homes up from 22% last month. Again, there were no closed sales of distressed waterfront properties in February and there are currently only 27 distressed waterfront properties for sale in all of Lake Norman out of 350 or 7.7%.
• 49% of our February Lake Norman home sales were under  $400,000 compared to 60.9 %  last month. 70% of February sales were under $500,000.
• Our average price is up for closed and conditional sales.
• On March 1st the number of active listings for all of Lake Norman totaled 856 up slightly from 811 on February 1st and our low of 752 on January 1st.  To put this number in context, back in June of 2008 we had 1789 active listings.

A closer look:

• The number of Active Listings in Lake Norman increased 5% from last month but were 20% lower than last February. It should be expected that our inventory will continue to rise this spring but hopefully we will remain well below last year’s numbers. Our absorption rate/months of supply of active listings stands at 15.  Our shrinking inventory is helping but at this lower pace of sales we are still twice as high as a balanced 6-8 months of supply in Lake Norman area (MLS area 13).  The good news for the long-term health of our Lake Norman housing market is that we are not being flooded with new listings so far this year.

• Contingent Sales, (sales contracts that are contingent upon the buyer selling their own home) which don’t account for a significant segment of our housing market, remain extremely low most likely because sellers are unwilling or unable to take on the risk of waiting for the buyer’s home to sell before closing.

• Conditional Sales increased for the third month in a row, this time by 9%. Our Lake Norman housing market has definitely picked up! These are homes that just went under contract and still have financial and inspection conditions. They represent future closed sales most likely in late March/April. Based upon these numbers our closed sales this month and next should exceed the same months in 2011.

• Pending sales were also up 18% compared to February 2011.    These are the contracts that are past inspections and are just waiting to close.  Pending sales are usually the best indication of closed sales in the next few weeks.

• The number of closed home sales in Lake Norman in February were up for the second straight month in a row and a substantial 30% higher than last February.  This was the BEST February since 2007!  (See the annual chart below).

Lake Norman homes under contract (but not yet closed) on the first of each month are as follows:

• March 1, 2012: 178
• February 1, 2012: 155
• January 1: 134 (the lowest ALL year)
• December 1: 147
• November: 169
• October: 193
• September: 183
• August: 193
• July: 178
• June: 199,
• May:  173
• April 195,
• March: 163
• February: 142

We are now seeing a marked upward trend after a lag at the end of 2011.  This uptick in sales coupled with our low inventory bode well for the overall health of the Lake Norman housing market.

Here is a breakdown by price-range of our January 2012 closed sales in Lake Norman’s area 13-1 to 13-5:

• $40,000 – $199,999:  7
• $200,000 – $299,999: 13
• $300,000 – $399,999: 10

(These price ranges represented 52.6% of  February sales )

• 400,000 – $499,999:  10
• $500,000 – $599,999: 5

(These price ranges represented 26% compared to 13% last month)

• $600,000 – $699,999:  6
• $700,000 – $799,999: 0
• $800,000 – $899,999: 0
• 900,000 – $999,999:  2

(Solds for $600,000 – $1mill = 14% compared to 23.9% last month)

• $1,000,000 – $1,999,999: 3
• $2 million+ : 1

(Solds $1million+ = 7% compared to 2% last month)

8-Year Comparison of Lake Norman Home Sales By Month

* Please note that all of my numbers are for single family homes. They come from the Charlotte Region Multiple Listing Service and will not include sales that took place outside of our MLS.

**I have made an adjustment of  the totals reflecting the ACTUAL  sales  every month in 2009, 2010 and the totals in the prior calendar years.  The columns may not add up but I do my best with what I have to work!  I also adjust past months when I do the monthly update as a few more sales are usually input late by agents.

Summary and My Insight

The Good News and the Bad:

Very Good:

• Inventory remains low without a significant spring bump
• Conditional, Pending and Closed sales are up boding well for the next few months at least!
• Number of distressed homes for sale are actually decreasing as a percentage of our total inventory
• I have experienced multiple offers including one listing of mine that sold for OVER ASKING last week
• We are seeing more and more new construction popping up (Not spec homes)
• Higher-end waterfront lots are selling again. Another sign that construction is returning
• Interest rates are at all time lows
• Unemployment rates are dropping locally and nationally

Bad:

• Sales above $700,00 are painfully low; our trade-up price ranges and our luxury homes continues to struggle
• With a shrinking inventory of active listings, buyers have fewer options
• Prices remain low
• Home loans, especially construction loans, are still a challenging process.

I continue to believe that our Lake Norman housing market has hit its bottom in terms of sales volume.  That said, prices for the most part remain low and buyers continue to be very picky. This is not an easy market for either buyers or sellers.

The future of our Lake Norman real estate market still depends primarily on these two things:

1. How much ”shadow inventory” do we have in our Lake Norman area?  Will we see more distressed properties coming on the market later this year or next year? So far this hasn’t been the case.

2.  Consumer confidence based upon the national/global economy and relative stability of our national economy

My advice to Lake Norman home buyers remains this: Look for homes that are in good locations and have most of the priorities on your list.  While your perfect home might come along, don’t wait too long and don’t dismiss a property if it isn’t perfect.  Prioritize: Location, quality and depth of water (if waterfront buyer) and floorplan. Then, to determine a realistic price, use VERY RECENT comparable sales in your specific market niche.  The selection may not be great but with interest rates at all time lows and prices low it is a good time to buy.  With only  7.4% of Lake Norman’s current listings being “distressed sales” don’t expect the perfect foreclosure or shortsale to come along at an unrealist price.  If you insist on lowballing, at least have some comparable sales to justify your number.  Don’t focus as much on the price as on the future marketability of the property.  A bargain that has incurable issues that will make it difficult to resale, really isn’t a bargain at all.  Be smart!

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Awwww, another day in paradise here on Lake Norman!  I took this photo at dusk from the dock of a property I listed this past Saturday which sold with multiple offers in 3 hours! Yes, our Lake Norman housing market is improving.  (I’ll write a separate post about this sale).   Last month’s calendar photo was a main channel view.  This photo is of a very wide cove which opens to the main channel.  The homes in the photo are located in Connor Quay, a small luxury gated community adjacent to The Peninsula in Cornelius.  The benefit of a location like this one is that you have stunning views including sunsets but you are off the main channel far enough to be spared from the wear and tear on your dock and the noise at peak boating times in the summer.

This photo was taken just a bit later and I turned towards the main channel but I was standing in the exact same spot as the photo above.

To make your desktop calendar, go to the round button at the top of this site’s home page entitled: “Lake Norman Calendar”. Click on this button and up will come this image of my Lake Norman photo wallpaper calender for March 2012. All you have to do is right click and select “set as background”. If you would like a copy of this photo without the calendar, just send me an email.

FREE $25 GAS CARD!

I need your HELP!  I would love to use one of your favorite photos depicting life here in Lake Norman.  (Optimum size is a landscape photo about 2MB or about 1600 x 1200 pixels). I will give a $25 Gas Card to anyone who provides a photo that I use as one of my monthly calendars.  If you’d like to submit a photo  or an idea for a future calendar, please send it to…

diane@dianeaurit.com

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Lake Norman Relocation and Resource Guide

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It is important to note that these numbers are only as good as the agents who report them. Expect an adjustment in our 46 sales in January upward perhaps two more sales by the end of the month since it takes some Realtors several weeks to actually input their sales into our MLS.  I create these reports early in the month while the information is still very fresh so always pad the sales upward just a bit.

Here are the January 2012 numbers from our Charlotte Multiple Listing Service for our Lake Norman area real estate market:

Some significant additional interesting statistics for you:

• “Distressed sales” ( Foreclosures (REOS), defaults, Short Sales) comprised 31.1% of our closed sales in January which was a slight drop from the 36.7% last month, 36% in November, 19.8% in October, 10% in September, 16.8 in August,  18.5%  in July,  25% in June and 27% in May. Our active buyers right now are clearly folks looking for bargains. The good news is that our number of distressed active listings dropped to 9.5% of our total number of homes for sale in Lake Norman compared to 10.9 % in December which indicates that our ratio of distressed new listings is actually decreasing.  We are not being bombarded by foreclosures and shortsales so far in 2012 as some had predicted.
• 22% of our closed sales were waterfront homes down from 33% last month, 19% in November,  28% in October and 38% in September.
• 60.9 % of our January sales were under were under $400 and 71.7% were under $500,000. Clearly our lower priced homes are still driving the market.
• Our average prices are down in our pending and closed sales but I believe this is more a reflection of our weaker higher end sales than actual price declines. Note that the average price of our conditional sales is 15% higher!
• On February 1st the number of active listings for all of Lake Norman totaled 811, up from 752 on January 1st which was the lowest number since I started these reports in 2007.  To put this number in context, back in June of 2008 we had 1789 active listings.  Today we have 843 active listings in all of Lake Norman (area 13).

A closer look:

• The number of Active Listings in Lake Norman increased 7.8% from last month but were 23% lower than last January. It should be expected that our inventory will continue to rise this spring but hopefully we will remain well below last year’s numbers. Our absorption rate/months of supply of active listings increased from 12.5% last month back up to 17.6% thanks to our low January sales.  Our shrinking inventory  is helping but at this lower pace of sales we are still twice as high as a balanced 6-8 months of supply in Lake Norman area (MLS area 13).

• Contingent Sales, (sales contracts that are contingent upon the buyer selling their own home) which don’t account for a significant segment of our housing market, remain extremely low most likely because sellers are unwilling or unable to take on the risk of waiting for the buyer’s home to sell before closing.

• Conditional Sales increased for the second month in a row, this time 16%  when compared to January 2011  and  19.7% higher than last month’s. Our Lake Norman housing market has definitely picked up! These are homes that just went under contract and still have financial and inspection conditions. They represent future closed sales most likely in late February/March. Based upon these numbers our closed sales in this month and next should exceed the same months in 2011.

• Pending sales were also up compared to January 2011 AND last month as well.    These are the contracts that are past inspections and are just waiting to close.  Pending sales are usually the best indication of closed sales in the next few weeks. While you are reading in the news about the national increase in pending sales here in Lake Norman our pending sales have been down so it is significant to see them picking up again!

• The number of closed home sales in Lake Norman in January were just about equal to January 2011.  While we didn’t reach January 201o’s 53 sales it is good to see us at least equal to last year’s. (See the annual chart below).

Lake Norman homes under contract (but not yet closed) on the first of each month are as follows:

• February 1, 2012: 155 (much better than the past two months!)
• January 1: 134 (the lowest ALL year)
• December 1: 147
• November: 169
• October: 193
• September: 183
• August: 193
• July: 178
• June: 199,
• May:  173
• April 195,
• March: 163
• February: 142

We are now trending upward again after a lag of several months.  This uptick in sales coupled with our low inventory bode well for the overall health of the Lake Norman housing market.

Here is a breakdown by price-range of our January 2012 closed sales in Lake Norman’s area 13-1 to 13-5:

• $42,000 – $199,999:  11        
• $200,000 – $299,999: 11 
• $300,000 – $399,999: 6

(These price ranges represented 60.9% of  January’s sales )

• 400,000 – $499,999:  5
• $500,000 – $599,999: 1

(These price ranges represented 13% compared to 16.6% last month)

• $600,000 – $699,999:  4
• $700,000 – $799,999: 2
• $800,000 – $899,999: 3
• 900,000 – $999,999:  2

(Solds for $600,000 – $1mill = 23.9% compared to 20% last month)

• $1,000,000 – $1,999,999: 1  (The highest sale in January was only $1.075 million!)
• $2 million+ : 0

(Solds $1million+ = 2% )

 8-Year Comparison of Lake Norman Home Sales By Month

* Please note that all of my numbers are for single family homes. They come from the Charlotte Region Multiple Listing Service and will not include sales that took place outside of our MLS.

**I have made an adjustment of  the totals reflecting the ACTUAL  sales  every month in 2009, 2010 and the totals in the prior calendar years.  The columns may not add up but I do my best with what I have to work!  I also adjust past months when I do the monthly update as a few more sales are usually input late by agents.

Summary and My Insight

The Good News and the Bad:

Very Good:

• Inventory is way down
• Conditional and Pending sales are up!
• Number of distressed homes for sale remains low and is actually decreasing as a percentage of our total inventory
• We seeing more and more new construction popping up (Not spec homes)
• Higher-end waterfront lots are selling again. Another sign that construction is returning
• Interest rates are at all time lows
• Unemployment rates are dropping locally and nationally

Bad:

• 47.8 % of our Lake Norman sales were under $300,000!
• Distressed sales comprise a larger percentage of our sales than our inventory.  Buyers are still motivated by bargains.
• Our highest closed sale last month was $1.075 million.  Our luxury home market was hit hard in the past three months but seems to be improving.
• With a shrinking inventory of active listings, buyers have fewer options.  With fewer “screaming bargains” will buyers sit back a bit this winter hoping for for another wave of foreclosures or will they buy as they did over the summer realizing that those days are behind us? The national news reports about a potential onslaught of  new foreclosures may keep buyers from taking advantage of our low prices right now.
• Home loans, especially construction loans, are still a challenging process.

I still believe that, overall, our home prices have stabilized.  I’m not seeing, for instance, the extremely low prices of waterfront home sales with good water that I did two years ago. The future of our Lake Norman real estate market still depends primarily on these two things:

1. How much ”shadow inventory” do we have in our Lake Norman area?  Will we see more distressed properties coming on the market later this year or next year? So far this hasn’t been the case.

2.  Consumer confidence based upon the national/global economy.

My advice to Lake Norman home buyers remains this: Look for homes that are in good locations and have most of the priorities on your list.  Then, to determine a realistic price, use VERY RECENT comparable sales in your specific market niche.  The selection may not be great but with interest rates at all time lows and prices for the most part having hit bottom it is a good time to buy.  With only  9.5% of Lake Norman’s current listings being “distressed sales”,  the “shadow inventory” hasn’t impacted our market.  At this pace, I think our market will remain at a rocky bottom of sorts with a continuation of the erratic ups and downs in 2012.

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