Charleston real estate market report, March 30, 2009, sales and inventory
Sometimes you just have to wonder why you should spend a couple of hours compiling statistics and creating pretty charts when it would be just as easy to not bother and just copy the previous month's Charleston real estate market report because there was no change from the prior month.
But, this report and tomorrow's Charleston home prices report are among the most popular and highly viewed posts so of course, I do and here you go.
Once again, lets begin with a look at the chart of inventory and absorption rate. The red line corresponds with inventory and the left axis and the blue line corresponds with the absorption rate and right axis. By the way, I recently noticed that the Charleston MLS includes contingent properties (under contract but with a contingency for financing, home inspection, etc., in the available inventory and I'm not sure it really matters whether there is 10,000 or 11,000 homes for sale in Charleston to anyone other than someone who is selling their home but I thought I might mention it for the sake of clarity.
The most interesting thing that you'll notice is that home sales in the higher price ranges have declined more sharply than sales at lower price points. It reflects more activity by first time home buyers and less activity in the "move up" housing market.
And this is but one of the reasons that you'll see price declines in tomorrow's home prices report. The other, obviously, is that with so many homes for sale on the market, there is more competition by sellers for fewer buyers putting serious pricing pressure on those sellers who must sell in today's market conditions.
Statistics compiled by Howard Arnoff using the Charleston MLS as the source of data, information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
Unit sales still doesn't paint a very pretty picture. But on a positive note, February concludes the slowest season of the year for Charleston home sales so it will be interesting to see whether March sales rebound. I can tell you in advance that with a week remaining in the month, 389 sales have already been reported for March, 253 home are pending and over 1000 are under contract and contingent.
Sales by price range
Inventory and absorption rate by price range
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.