Lake Norman Real Estate’s April 2009 Sales Analysis

Whether you are a potential home buyer considering the greater Lake Norman area or a Lake Norman homeowner trying to determine the best time to sell, it has never been more important to be informed in every possible way about our local Lake Norman real estate market.

Our Lake Norman housing market continues to change rapidly.  What was true even a month ago may not be true today.  That said, here is the summary of Lake Norman single family home sales and statistics for this past April.  (The period ending yesterday):

 Active Listings:  Our total number of active listings increased 6.6% in the month of April.  While it would be better for our housing market if our number of active listings decreased, this is not a significant increase considering this is our peak season for Lake Norman real estate sales.

Contingent Sales:  This represents the number of homes that are under contract but are contingent upon the buyers selling their own homes.  In a buyers market, this is not a strong position for a seller as it may take months for the buyer’s property to sell.  This number remains fairly low which indicates to me that sellers are looking for stronger offers.

Conditional Sales:  At 37, the number of  homes under contract that are in the early stages with conditions for loans and inspections is about even with the past few months.  This is our best indicator of future closed sales.

Pending Sales:  84 pending sales is the highest we have seen for many months.  These are sales that are just waiting to close which would indicate that our May closings should be even higher than this month.  Finally, a bit of good news!

Closed Sales:  Normally we would not celebrate about 69 sales in any given month but this is a 64% increase versus last month, a drop of only 23% versus April 2008 and it is the best month since September 2008 which was before the financial crisis.  The only reason I am not celebrating and saying that we have hit the bottom of our market is because our Conditional sales for this month are so low.  It is hard to know whether this truly is an upward trend or just a minor spike.

5-Year Comparison of Lake Norman Home Sales By Month 

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

**While my totals on this chart for 2008 sales is 870, when I search on our MLS for the entire year they give me a slightly higher number of 916 so I will use that as our official number for the sake of this analysis.

Summary:  With 69 closed sales and 1648 active listings in the Lake Norman area, we still have a 24-month supply of homes for sale.  While this is substantially better than the last quarter, a balanced housing market should have about 6-8 months of inventory so we are still in a buyers market.  However, it is great to see a positive month.  Now let’s hope this trend continues!