One interesting thing I have observed is that many banks want properties off their books by the end of the year.  I just has a short sale approved after months of waiting…but the stipulation was that we had to close by Dec. 30th.  This may also contribute to a relatively strong December.

The above chart is a summary of today’s “Hot Sheet” from the Charlotte Multiple Listing Service for single family homes in all of Lake Norman (area 13).  These numbers represent a real time snapshot of the past two week’s activity.  (December 1 – 15).  As always, I have included the past 5 months so that you can put these numbers in perspective.

Highlights:

New listings dropped sharply compared to previous months and are 22% below the same period in 2008.  (Our total number of active listing in Lake Norman have dipped below 1300 which is a 12% drop from December 2008).  A decrease in inventory is the most significant component to our housing recovery.

The number of properties that came back-on-the-market, most likely due to cancelled contracts, was actually quite high considering the time of year. This is further evidence that our loan process is extremely challenging.  More properties came back on the market than closed in the past two weeks.  Clearly This explains why our pending sales are not translating to even higher closed sales.

The number of price changes also dropped significantly.   While I am seeing price reductions daily, my guess is that many sellers will wait until after the holidays so that they get more bang for their buck so to speak.

Pending home sales remain pretty strong considering it is December.  They are 57% higher than December 2008.  Since these are an indicator of future closed sales I predict our December 2009 sales will be about the same as November or maybe even a bit higher.

The number of closed sales in the past two weeks are almost equal to October’s and up 58% for the same period in December 2008.   Last year we closed 62 sales in December so I think we are on tract to beat that number!

Contingent and Conditional sales have dropped almost 30% compared to October but up 43% compared to December 2008.   Since these are properties that just went under contract, these may translate to a typical seasonal January slowdown but still indicate a dramatic improvement from December 2008!  

While the number of showings on my listings have slowed and I am not showing as much property as I did most of the year, there are still serious buyers and motivated sellers around Lake Norman.  It continues to be all about bargains and I’m sure this will be true until our prices bottom out and our inventory is back in line with our sales.

Important news to consider:

I just read in the news that wholesale prices spiked which may lead to inflation worries.  It will be very interesting to hear what the Feds say after their meeting in the next few days.  Hopefully, interest rates will remain as they are. 

Finally, a UNC Charlotte economist, John Connaughton, recently said that the NC economy has begun ” …its long, slow, turnaround, but it could take years before job and spending figures bounce back in the levels of better times…”   He went on to predict that our state’s economy will grow 2.8% in 2010 compared to a decline of 3.6% in 2009.  While Connaughton expects North Carolina’s unemployment rate to remain in double digits in 2010 (10.5%), he said “The recession is over, and the really positive news is we’ve started to see a change in the unemployment side.   Things will get better each quarter in 2010.”

Our Lake Norman real estate market has a long way to go in order to fully recover but it does appear that 2010 will bring more hope than 2009!

Related Articles

Lake Norman Real Estate’s December Hot Sheet 2008

Lake Norman Real Estate’s Fourth Quarter Sales Analysis 2008

Lake Norman Real Estate’s Waterfront Home Sales Analysis November 2009

Lake Norman Real Estate:  What do recent sales in The Point tell us? 

 Lake Norman Real Estate:  Why is it so hard to buy a home right now?

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Lake Norman Hot Sheet: August 14, 2009 

I always look forward to doing the research for my Friday Hot Sheets because it gives me a chance to see the most recent snapshot of what is REALLY going on with our Lake Norman Real Estate Market.  It can be confusing and frustrating to follow the national real estate news because their reports are a month or more behind and our local market is usually quite different from the national trends.

The above chart is a summary of today’s “Hot Sheet” from the Charlotte Multiple Listing Service for single family homes in all of Lake Norman (area 13).  These numbers represent a real time snapshot of the past two week’s activity.  As always, I have included the past 5 months so that you can put these numbers in perspective.

Highlights:

New listings increased by 5% from July.  At a time when our market should be seeing a decrease in active listings as we head into the fall, it is a bit disconcerting to see this number increasing.  If we add the new listings of  120 with the 55 properties that came back on the market in reality our inventory increased by 175 homes in the past two weeks.  At the same time, if we add the contingent, conditional pending and solds we find that 120 properties were taken out of our number of active listings which means we had a net gain of 55 active listings.  (This does not include the properties that were withdrawn or expired).

The number of properties that came back-on-the-market, most likely due to cancelled contracts, dropped slightly.  This is always a good sign but not significant enough to substantiate a trend.

The number of price changes increased by 7%.  Prices are coming down as you may remember from my July sales analysis. This is a critical component of our Lake Norman housing market recovery….painful but necessary!

Pending home sales remained stable.  I actually thought we would see a decline so this is an indication that our August sales may be slightly higher than July.

The number of closed sales in the past two weeks increased 9% over both June and July numbers and are the highest for the entire year.  Again, I expected to see sales level off so this may be mean that August will have higher sales than July.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised to see the strength of the activity in the Lake Norman real estate market for the past two week.  While most of the closed sales were under $400,000, there were several over $1million.  The interesting details about these higher priced sales is that the closing prices were 70% of the listing price.  Prices are coming down in our luxury home market and buyers who have been sitting on the sidelines seem to be dipping their toe in the water.

All in all, these numbers provide a glimmer of hope that we will see stronger sales this month than  in July.  Perhaps it is due to the fear that interest rates are rising or the impending deadline of the $8,000 First-Time-Buyer rebate, but there does seem to be quantifiable, albeit slight, signs of improvement in the Lake Norman housing market.

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• 2-week snapshots called Hot Sheets for up-to-the minute Lake Norman housing data
• Monthly sales reports which compare it to the previous year and prior month
• Quarterly sales reports which provide two separate reports; an overview of the 2nd quarter and then a break down by price-range.

IMPORTANT FINDINGS

• Our current inventory of active listings has actually dropped by 11%.  While they are still too high, this is certainly a move in the right direction.
• The number conditional sales (those that just went under contract) are dramatically higher than last year however the average price has decreased and the average days on market has increased 44%.  Please note the average sales price last year was very high due to several high sales that skewed the figure.
• The number of pending sales (those that are ready to close) dropped by 17% but the average price and days on market are almost the same as last year.
• The number of closed sales this past quarter dropped 23% versus the second quarter of 2008.  The average price dropped 3% but the average days a home was on the market increased by 43%.
• Our number of months of supply of homes increased from 19.9 to 22.8.  Even though our inventory has dropped, our sales dropped even more which results in a higher number of months of supply.  As always, keep in mind that a balance housing  market should have between 6-8 months of supply so we current have three times as many homes for sale as we should have.  We are definitely still in a buyers market!  However, it is nice to see some higher numbers in conditional and pending sales.

2nd Quarter 2009 Lake Norman Home Sales By Price Range

*All statistics are from the Charlotte Regional Multiple Listing Service

This report is probably the most useful for both home buyers and sellers.  This is because it enables you to focus on your own price range and size up the competition, the strengths and weaknesses and trends that might help position you best for your future purchase or sale.

For example, let’s say you are planning to buy a home in the $600,000 – $1 million price range.  While that price range in general is very weak, the homes priced in the $700,000s and the $900,000s have over twice as many months of inventory than the other price ranges.  Knowing these are particularly weak, you might look for greater discounts when making your offer.  When there are 64 homes on the market in the $900,000s and on average only one sells per month, you can imagine these sellers must be getting pretty anxious.

On the flip side, if you are a seller in this same price range and are on the fence about pricing your home in the low $700,000s or the high $600,000s, clearly you should price your home in the $600,000s where you have a much larger pool of buyers and the least amount of competition (months of supply, not number of homes).

This past quarter, 67.3% of all of the Lake Norman home sales were under $500,000.  Only 12.5% of our Lake Norman home sales were $700,000 or higher yet that same price range represents 31.4% of our active listings.  As has been the case for several years, our higher end homes sales are extremely slow.

So, pick a price range and take a look at the number of sales, the number of active listings, the average days on the market and the months of supply.  This report provides you with the data to focus on your price niche.

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 Lake Norman Real Estate:  Why is it so hard to buy a home right now?

Lake Norman Real Estate:  The Big Picture

Lake Norman Real Estate’s May 2009 Sales Analysis

Lake Norman Real Estate’s April 2009 Sales Analysis

Lake Norman Real Estate’s 1st Quarter Sales Analysis

 Lake Norman Home Buyers, Stop Searching for Homes

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Friday Hot Sheet: June 12, 2009

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I must admit I have been exceptionally busy these past several months which had increased my curiosity about our current home sales numbers.  Above is a chart with today’s “Hot Sheet” numbers from the Charlotte Regional Multiple Listing Service for single family homes in all of Lake Norman (Area 13).  These numbers represent a snapshot of the past two weeks activity.  As always, I have included the prior 6 months so that you can put these numbers into perspective.

Here are some highlights:

New listings crept back up just a bit.  Unfortunately, for our market to turn the corner we need the active listings to drop back to a 6-8 months supply.

The significant jump in homes that came back on the market due to cancelled contracts does not surprise me considering the multitude of difficulties we are experiencing related to loans and appraisals.  While sales are up,  the number of canceled contracts out number these sales by 40%!

Wow, look at the number of price changes!  Prices continue to drop as sellers increase their understanding of the market and as we see an increase in foreclosures, bank-owned properties and short sales.

Pending sales are those that are past all inspections and loan contingencies and are simply waiting to close.  We have had a 32% increase in pending sales when compared to a month ago.  This would indicate that closed sales should  be higher in the next few weeks than the same time last month.

Unfortunately, the number of contingent and conditional sales dropped 24% versus last month.  These would be new sales that are still going through the inspection and loan processes.  These are our best numbers for forecasting the number of closed sales for next month.  It could be possible that our sales actually will peak this month and then start to drop.

Once again, I can’t stress enough the importance of the number of months of homes for sale is when trying to determine our “bottom”.   If we assume we will have about 90 closed sales in June, with a current inventory of 1609 active listings we still have 18 months of supply of homes for sale.  We are heading in the right direction but are not out of the woods yet! 

RELATED ARTICLES

 Lake Norman Real Estate:  Why is it so hard to buy a home right now?

Lake Norman Real Estate:  The Big Picture

Lake Norman Real Estate’s May 2009 Sales Analysis

Lake Norman Real Estate’s April 2009 Sales Analysis

Lake Norman Real Estate’s 1st Quarter Sales Analysis

 Lake Norman Home Buyers, Stop Searching for Homes

Lake Norman Real Estate’s Friday Hot Sheet

April 17, 2009

* Data from Charlotte Regional MLS

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 are increasing.  While this is normal for this time of year, our total number of active listings in the Lake Norman area has climbed back up to 1623 at a time when sales are still very low so our conditions are actually worsening.  If we combine the new and back on the market listings during this two week period we increased our number of active listings by 197 while the number of contingent/conditional/pending and solds resulted in a total of 78 homes being removed from our active inventory for a net gain of 119.  The single most important thing we need to see before we can conclude that our Lake Norman housing market has bottomed out is a reduction of the number of active listings to about a 6-8 months of supply. Right now we have a 35 months of supply.

The number of homes coming back on the market has again increased slightly.  These are homes that were under contracts and were cancelled.  The fact that twice as many homes had canceled contracts than closed shows the volatility in our market! 

Price changes remained identical to last month.  Sellers are reducing their prices because of the slow market.

The number of pending sales increased slightly.  These are the homes under contract that have gone through all of their inspections, obtaining loan approval and a ready to close.

The number of contingent and conditional sales dropped by 30% versus last month.  These are the homes that went under contract in the past two weeks and would indicate that our future sales are not increasing and are infact decreasing slightly at a time when we are hitting our peak Lake Norman home sales season.

 So far in April we have had 32 home sales close compared to 49 in the same period last year.  This is a drop of 35%.  The average price dropped 11.5%.

Clearly, we are not out of the woods yet!  I personally have seen an increase in showings and sales in the first-time buyer price ranges which are most likely a result of the $8000 credit/rebate.  Sales requiring jumbo loans are hampered by the higher rates and conditions.  I am going to write a separate article about jumbo loans this next week.

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Lake Norman Real Estate’s 1st Quarter Sales Analysis

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

Lake Norman Real Estate:  Good News!

Lake Norman Real Estate’s Luxury Home Market Update

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