House hunting in a buyers market for Charleston South Carolina real estate
The buyer in today's Charleston South Carolina real estate market is certainly in a sweet spot. There are so many nice choices offered at very attractive prices that the biggest problem the buyer faces is choosing the perfect home.
In new construction especially, the site agents for the builders are as accomodating as I have seen in my real estate career. I know many of the site agents and it's always interesting as they move from community to community and after working with them previously at another development, you have the opportunity to work with them with a completely different product. And the really good site agents are such a pleasure to work with, they are so comfortable with what they are offering and make it such a pleasurable event for the buyer.
Of course, the big difference today is how motivated to sell the site agents are. They are representing builders, both large and small who have inventory homes that they need to move. Some homes have come back on the market for various reasons, job transfers that fell through, financing that was available previously that no longer can be obtained due to stricter lending standards, sales contingent upon the sale of the buyer's current home that has not sold as yet and other reasons.
While in the "good old days", a buyer had to make a decision instantly or lose the house to a competing offer or wait on the waiting list for months until there was availability to build in the next phase, there are nice choices in many communities and instead of paying list price, the site agents go out of their way to indicate the builders will consider all reasonable offers and that is on top of the concessions graciously being offered. In one case, we were astounded at the price reduction being made available up front which took a house that would have been otherwise unaffordable to being a contender.
The seller of a preowned home is competing with the new construction and must understand the buyers market that exists in Charleston as elsewhere in the country. I believe that in my last Charleston market report that over half of the available inventory was new construction and half was preowned. If the builders are negotiable and the seller of a preowned home wants to compete, they must be more negotiable to a lower offer than they might have hoped for.
I've recently sold several listings and while we didn't get quite the price we were looking for, as I explained to my sellers, "there are 8000 homes available for sale and 1000 homes will sell this month. Even though the offer is a little less than might have been hoped for, at least we are one of the 1000 that will sell rather than the 7000 that didn't get an offer to consider. If you want to sell, you must consider the competition that the buyer can choose from."
House hunting is fun and of course, the most rewarding part of the adventure is to match the buyer with the home of their dreams. The search continues but we have lots of nice choices and I'm sure my buyers will select a beautiful home.