Charleston real estate market report, sales and inventory, January 31, 2010
The end of the year Charleston real estate market report is always the best of the 12 monthly Charleston housing market analyses for several reasons.
First of all, I always go back and update all the late reporting from the past year to provide the most accurate statistics. And it is always amazing to find that there are always a dozen or so additional sales from the previous year as well so the numbers are always changing but they're good enough to get a sense of the trends.
Secondly, it gives me an opportunity to assess which statistics are most meaningful for you and gives me some ideas on how to present the statistics next year in an even better format for you (actually, the inventory charts have been improved). So look for a few changes next year and without any further ado, here is the year end sales and inventory report.
Statistics compiled by Howard Arnoff using the Charleston MLS as the source of data, information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
Sales
Monthly sales are represented by the blue line for 2007, the red line for 2008 and the yellow line for 2009.
There was a big improvement in sales during the last half of the year with the last 4 months higher on a year over year basis. Of course, some of the sales were due to the home buyer tax credit which was designed to stabilize the housing market and basically it did exactly that and homes under $300k did perform best.
Inventory
Inventory is represented by the red line and corresponds to the left axis, the absorption rate is represented by the blue line and corresponds to the right axis.
While the chart looks good, the actual numbers aren't quite as encouraging. There is still a ton of inventory available for sale with the difference from peak to trough of only 800 listings, practically negligible when there are over 10,000 homes for sale in the Charleston area. And while the absorption rate has certainly improved, most of the improvement once again came in the entry level price point of homes selling for less than $300k with a multi year supply of homes available at higher price points. Don't look for any price appreciation until the glut of excess inventory gets absorbed.
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.