Lake Norman Real Estate: Friday, August 22, 2008 Hot Sheet!

LAKE NORMAN RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE HOT SHEET

August 22, 2008

My fourth bi-monthly Lake Norman Friday Hot Sheet is here!

Above is a chart with Friday’s “hot sheet” numbers from the Charlotte Multiple Listing Services for all single family homes in Lake Norman (area 13). For comparison, I have provided numbers from the past two weeks and earlier this year. Here are some highlights:

• Unfortunately, the strong pending numbers from four weeks ago truly did not result in an upward trend is sales. In fact, sales are down to their lowest level since I started this reporting in March. This is important to know because the National Association of Realtors uses Pending Sales as an indicator of future sales trends yet for some reason ours did not translate to sales! (Is pending not as good an indicator as they think?)

• New listings were identical to the last Hot Sheet. Inventory is beginning to go down which is a GREAT sign!

• The number of listings coming back-on-the-market decreased again, this time by 21%… This truly is a good sign as it mean more initial offers are “sticking”. Perhaps home buyer confidence is stronger and the home mortgage environment has stabilized, or is this due to our seasonal slowdown?

• The number of price changes has decreased by 15% which may simply be a result of the lowering of our inventory. I have seen some significant price reductions on homes I have been showing…sometimes as much as 20% or more. (See my Case Study…link below)

• While up 19% versus our last Hot Sheet, Pending sales remain low. No serious indication of change in our sales trends.

• Solds (home sales contracts that closed in the past two weeks) dropped by 21% from the high of 47 four weeks ago. Weak Pending sales and dropping Solds reflect at least a seasonal slow down in our market.

• Contingent and Conditional Sales were about the same…These would be Lake Norman home sales just put under contract…It would have been better to see these numbers higher as that would have indicated the market is improving. We seem to have stabilized. With the exception of July 25th, all of the numbers are fairly consistent with the first and second quarter of 2008.

Overall, I would have to conclude that at the very least we are experiencing the typical late summer slowdown. Our greatest sign of improvement will come when our inventory of active listings drops to no more than 6-8 Months of Inventory. Our current inventory reflects about a 19-month of supply of active listings.

The bottom line is we still have too many homes for sale compared to the current rate of sales. Yesterday I was showing property out in the Curtis Pond, Linwood Farms areas of Mooresville. In Curtis Ponds we viewed 3 homes in pre-foreclosure status out of 7. The new, smaller development of Harris Crossing, where can get a new home with over 2400 square feet for under $200,000 was quite active. Buyers still want new homes or homes that are in perfect condition at a great price!

Have a great weekend!

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