Charleston home prices, average and median sales
There is a lot of misconception regarding home prices today, the media and some analytics have highlighted sharp price declines across the country. But real estate is local and the Charleston real estate market has performed much better than many other areas around the country.
I'm not a Pollyanna, I'm not wearing rose colored glasses and I don't necessarily support the NAR advertising theme of "it's a great time to buy". But take a look at the average and median sales prices for all Charleston real estate over the past 2 years and I think you'll see that housing prices have not crashed here as you may have been led to believe but have actually been fairly stable.
There are still problems though since inventory remains very elevated and unit sales are down on a year over year basis for the past 2 years. Until inventory is reduced, don't expect to see much if any appreciation since buyers are firmly in control of the market. Buyers have lots of choices and it's very easy to find motivated sellers offering very nice homes for sale in Charleston today.
The blue line represents prices from Aug 2006 - July 2007 and the red line represents prices from Aug 2007 - July 2008 in the following charts, the top chart is average sales prices and the bottom chart is median sales prices.
