Lake Norman Real Estate: Friday, July 25th Hot Sheet!

LAKE NORMAN RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE HOT SHEET

Friday, July 25, 2008

Hot Sheet	7/25/08	7/11/08	6/27/08	5/12/08	4/12/08	3/10/08
New Listings	138	157	142	189	169	174
Back- on Market	54	43	55	46	42	40
Price Changes	238	204	248	212	204	154
Pending Sales	61	37	55	49	37	52
Sold	47	42	41	45	44	35
Conditional + Contingent	22	21	18	18	17	22

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

It is great to see that quite a number of people are enjoying these new bi-monthly reports so I will continue to do them! As I stated two weeks ago, despite all of our technology, one part of our real estate practice has consistently been an important part of our routine…pulling the daily, or in this case, bi-monthly Hot Sheet which gives us a snapshot update for all residential real estate activity in Lake Norman for the past two weeks.

Above is a chart with today’s numbers from the Charlotte Multiple Listing Services and then, for comparison, numbers from the past two weeks and earlier this year. Here are some highlights:

The past two weeks indicate some positive signs in the Lake Norman real estate market…will it continue or is it a fluke?

New listings were finally DOWN..the lowest since late winter! (We have too many homes for sale so a drop is a good thing right now).

The number of listings coming back-on-the-market increased 26%… are we seeing less stability in mortgages and a decrease in buyer confidence?

The number of price changes has increased by 16% which indicates sellers are getting more realistic or more motivated to sell.

Pending sales almost DOUBLED! Since these are sales that are about to close, this indicates August sales may be remarkably strong. I checked the numbers twice because they were so high. It’s hard to know if this is a fluke or a positive trend.

Solds (home sales contracts that closed in the past two weeks) were the highest so far this spring/summer. There was just a slight increase but none-the-less they are heading up rather than down at a time of year when sales are usually slowing.

Contingent and Conditional Sales were about the same…These would be home sales just put under contract…will the Pending sales be just a blip on the screen and then we will return to about the same levels as we have had recently? It would have been better to see these numbers higher as well to substantiate a true upward trend.

Overall, the decrease in new listings and the increase in price changes and pending sales does show a bit of hope for change. It will be VERY interesting to see our numbers in two weeks when we will be able to determine if this is a trend or, as I said above, but a blip on the screen in an otherwise soft Lake Norman real estate market.

There was a front-page article today in The Charlotte Observer “Area home sales fall faster than nation’s…Buyers wait for better deals as experts wonder when the market will hit bottom.” This article is talking about our 2nd quarter home sales statistics which you might want to compare to my Lake Norman 2nd Quarter 2008 Sales Analysis. (See link below!)

Have a great weekend!

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