Charleston real estate market report, sales and inventory, Jan 3, 2010
I've reported interim sales numbers for November previously so you probably already know that November was an outstanding month for real estate sales in Charleston. And while figures are never final because I'm constantly updating figures from as far back as the beginning of the year as Charleston real estate agents sometimes tend to forget to enter sold data into the Charleston MLS, a month after the close of the month should be good enough to close things out.
And while I'm on the subject, preliminary data shows December was pretty good as well even though there was a rush to buy before the home buyer tax credit expired November 30th (since extended and expanded) which should have pulled forward a lot of sales. The surprise for December was that prices were much higher than this November. Preliminary December sales show 541 in 09 vs. 560 in 08, median $193,500 in Dec 09 up from $170,473 in Nov 09 and close to $196,116 in Dec 08 and average price $291,194 in Dec 09 up from $228,046 in Nov 09 and higher than $258,904 in Dec 08.
More on Charleston home prices in tomorrow's post but median and average don't seem to matter much anymore, the mix of homes sold with so much activity at the entry level and distressed properties including foreclosures and short sales are distorting normal ways of measuring how home prices are really doing.
Statistics compiled by Howard Arnoff using the Charleston MLS as the source of data, information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
Sales
What can you say but WOW, November was by far the best month in 2009 compared to the previous year with sales over 67% higher for all homes, almost 73% higher for homes selling for less than $300k and between $300k and $600k and almost even for the luxury segment of the Charleston real estate market.
Sales are represented by the blue line for 2007, the red line for 2008 and the yellow line for 2009.
Inventory and absorption rate
Inventory is represented by the red line and corresponds to the left axis and the absorption rate is represented by the blue line and corresponds to the right axis.
The chart below actually looks better than the reality as far as inventory is concerned because actual available inventory has only dropped by 748 homes for sale from last year but the good news from the chart is the improvement in the absorption rate which has sharply declined. And I've been talking about this for a while but the absorption rate at the higher price points is not measured in months of supply but rather in years and in the case of the luxury Charleston real estate market, there is an astounding 5 1/2 years supply of homes at the current sales pace.
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.