The rise and fall of inventory of Charleston homes for sale
One of the most important trends this year in the Charleston real estate market has been lower inventory levels of homes for sale in Charleston.
From very low levels during 2003 through 2005, inventory soared during 2006 and 2007 peaking in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis and has slowly declined starting in 2009 and continuing through this year. While inventory levels are still elevated, the trend is certainly moving in the right direction. It's also important to mention that available inventory includes both active homes and homes that are under contract but contingent and you can generally knock at least 1000 homes off the total (as an example, today there are 7206 active homes for sale and 1382 homes that are contingent).
There is a lot of talk about shadow inventory that has yet to make it on the market and while foreclosure activity stalled due to foreclosure-gate and the robo signing scandal, in my opinion, the numbers of homes should be minimal.
Statistics compiled by Howard Arnoff using the Charleston MLS as the source of data, information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
