Charleston real estate market report, sales and inventory, January 3, 2009
Because sales declined sharply in the past several months while inventory levels continue to remain high (although dropping slightly as is normal heading into the end of the year only to return to the market in the early part of the next year), the absorption rate has skyrocketed.
Sales in November were particularly slow but this past November was unusual in several ways, the month began and ended on a weekend and actually had only 19 business days. Enough for the excuses, certainly the biggest problem was that November would be the first full month to feel the impact of the credit and stock market meltdown from September and October. Consumer confidence plummeted which is never a very good sign for housing. I think we'll see a bad December with a bit of a pickup beginning next year due to new leadership in Washington and amazingly low mortgage rates. Since Xmas, activity on my website has picked up substantially and my phone has been much busier.
I hope you like and find the information to be more helpful by classifying the Charleston real estate market by price range. In addition to all Charleston home sales, classifications include under $300k which is approximately 74.5% of the market, $300k to $600k which is approximately 17% of the market and over $600k which is approximately 8.5% of the market.
Statistics compiled by Howard Arnoff using the Charleston MLS as the source of data, information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
In the graph below, the blue line represents all 2007 Charleston home sales and the red line represents all 2008 Charleston home sales.
In the graph below, the blue line represents the absorption rate and right axis and the red line represents actual inventory and the left axis.
The current inventory (inv) column reflects the number of active listings on the market on the 16th day of each month. The months of inventory (mo) column is equal to the current inventory divided by the monthly sales. This reflects how many months it would take to sell out of inventory at the current month’s rate of sale. It can also be referred to as the absorption rate.
