Charleston real estate market report, sales, inventory and home prices, August 30, 2010
The reasons for the sharp decline in home sales in this month's Charleston real estate market report has already been well covered in my posts analyzing the national existing home sales report and housing is not really dead, yet. And the short reason is not just the expiration of the home buyer tax credit which pulled demand forward but consumer uncertainty regarding the job market and job security.
The good news for the Charleston real estate market is that July showed significant improvement in both the mid priced and luxury Charleston home sectors which wouldn't be impacted by the tax credit incentive like homes selling for less than $300,000. And considering how bad the economy seems to be on a national basis, the Charleston economy remains in pretty good shape with the Boeing facility under construction and other businesses (and people in general) relocating to Charleston.
Statistics compiled by Howard Arnoff using the Charleston MLS as the source of data, information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
Home Prices
The good news is home prices stabilized across all price ranges with minimal declines for the median price and average price over the past 12 months compared to the prior 12 months but prices based on dollars per square foot have generally declined. Home sales are sharply higher, inventory and absorption rates are lower.
Sales and Inventory
Home Sales
Monthly Sales are represented by the blue line for 2008, the red line for 2009 and the yellow line for 2010.
The July decline is rather obvious but more importantly is how will sales hold up through the balance of the year.
Inventory and Absorption rate
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.
Actual inventory should start to decline throughout the balance of the year but the absorption rate reversed dramatically with fewer home sales in July.
Sales, inventory and absorption rate for all homes by price point
There was nice improvement in both mid priced homes and luxury Charleston real estate compared to last year and of course, the first half of the year was exceptionally strong for homes selling for less than $300k.
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.