Lake Norman Real Estate: May 15, 2009 Hot Sheet

Above is a chart with today’s “Hot Sheet” numbers from the Charlotte Regional Multiple Listing Service for single family homes in the Lake Norman area (13/1 – 13/5).  These numbers represent a snapshot of the past two weeks of activity. As always I have included prior months so that you can put these numbers into context.

Here are some highlights:

New listings dropped slightly and it appears that they have stabilized at the mid 1600′s.  Since one of the key factors contributing to our declining sales is the excessive number of homes for sale around Lake Norman, let’s hope this trend continues and inventory starts to drop significantly.

The number of homes coming back on the market decreased slightly.  These are homes that were under contracts that were cancelled.  Again, the fact that these numbers are dropping is a good sign but they are still reflecting the volatility in our current market. 

Price changes increased to the second highest number since October of 2008.  Sellers are clearly getting the message and are reducing their prices because of the slow market.  This is an indication of the trend of our home values which are still declining.

The number of pending sales increased.  These are the homes under contract that have gone through all of their inspections, have loan approval and a ready to close.  Based upon this trend we should see a slightly higher number of closed home sales in Lake Norman for the month of May versus April. 

The number of contingent and conditional sales doubled versus the same period last month.  These are the homes that went under contract in the past two weeks and would indicate that our sales are picking up as they do every year at this time.

 So far in May we have had 29 home sales close compared to 39  in the same period last year.  This is a drop of 25.6%.  The average price dropped 8.9%.  Considering that last May’s number of Lake Norman home sales were 41% lower than 2007, we are still trending downward. 

Again, I can’t stress enough how important the number of months of supply of inventory of homes for sale is in determining when we hit “bottom”.  If we end up selling about 75 homes this month, while this is better than last month, this still means we have a 21.8 month of supply of homes and we need to get that number down to about 6-8 months of supply before our market stabilizes. 

RELATED ARTICLES

Lake Norman Real Estate’s April 2009 Sales Analysis

Lake Norman Real Estate’s Friday Hot Sheet 4/17/09

Lake Norman Real Estate’s 1st Quarter Sales Analysis

Lake Norman Real Estate’s Friday Hot Sheet 3/20/09

 Lake Norman Home Buyers, Stop Searching for Homes!