New and existing home sales down nationally, Charleston home sales higher
There was lots of coverage in the past several days about new home sales plunging to a record low in May and purchases of existing homes unexpectedly fell but Charleston home sales were higher in May compared to both May 2009 and April 2010. Here are the numbers.
Statistics compiled by Howard Arnoff using the Charleston MLS as the source of data, information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
There were a total of 921 homes sold in Charleston during the month of May, an increase of 8 percent over the previous month, April 2010 and an increase of 23.5 percent over a year ago, May 2009. Historically, new home sales in Charleston make up approximately 25 percent of the market and new home sales in Charleston totalled 245 (26.6 percent).
Now, first of all, on a national basis, new home sales are counted as a sale when the contract is signed. There are obviously cancellations. The Charleston MLS does not have statistics of new home sales on that same basis so I can only report on how many new homes actually closed in a month (which in my personal opinion is probably more valid than signed contracts).
So it should come as no surprise that with the home buyer tax credit deadline of April 30 to sign a contract that new home sales should have plunged in May because demand was pulled forward.
Now, let's take a look at existing home sales which were the subject of disappointment to the market. Nationally, sales increased 18 percent from the year ago period before accounting for seasonal adjustments. The end of the tax credit stimulus and the lengthy time to close short sales and lender backlog were all blamed.
To be honest, why bother with seasonal adjustments, May of 2009 and May of 2010 are seasonally equal and whenever you have government statisticians doing anything, you know you have creative accounting at work.
And buyers should have been warned by their real estate agents that more than likely, short sales would not close in time to qualify for the tax credit and I'll predict that you will see lots of cancellations of short sale contracts in the early days of July.
Bottom line, real estate is local and Charleston real estate is doing much better than most markets around the country.