Real estate is local, Charleston existing home sales and inventory
Yesterday, the existing home sales report was released and while sales jumped nationally by 7.6 percent, inventory of homes for sale shot up by 11.5 percent, the highest since last July and the biggest jump in 10 years. Read a nice synopsis of national housing trends and forecasts at Investor's Business Daily.
But real estate is local so how are things going in the Charleston real estate market.
Pretty good and better than most.
April home sales in the Charleston area were 11.5 percent higher than March and a whopping 43.4 percent higher than April 2009. As to inventory, it also climbed as is typical of the spring build up but was only 4.5 percent higher than March and actually 2.0 percent lower than April 2009. The absorption rate remains stubbornly high, a little higher than nationally with a 13.44 months supply of homes but better than the 19.56 months supply of homes one year ago.
It does appear from the chart below that the buildup in inventory of available homes for sale in Charleston is a little steeper than last year. I think that some sellers have decided that with better overall economic news that now is the time to put their homes on the market. The red line represents inventory and corresponds to the left axis and the blue line represents the absorption rate and corresponds to the right axis.
