Lake Norman 1st Quarter Sales Analysis

LAKE NORMAN SINGLE FAMILY HOUSING REPORT

 The news regarding the US housing market has lately seen some positive mixed in with negatives:

• Sales activity has improved in some areas around the country, due in part by the number of foreclosures.
• The National Association of REALTORS is projecting a 1% rise in 2009 home sales.
• By 2010 NAR expects the median price of resale homes to rise 4.1% and sales to increase by 5.8%
• The just released S&P/Case Shiller Home Price Indices through January 2009 "shows continued broad based declines in the prices of existing single family homes across the US."  They say prices are back to 2003 levels in many areas of the country.

 With so much information gathered by using a variety of sources of information, it can be difficult to know exactly how this news pertains to our local Lake Norman housing market.

Using the data from the Charlotte Regional Multiple Listing Service for the Lake Norman area (13 1-5) as I do every quarter, I have provided you with an overall summary of the 1st quarter of 2009 as well as a detailed breakdown by price range:

 Summary:

• Active Listings have stabilized compared to last year but are still too high!
• Contingent Sales are just down slightly
• Conditional Sales are up 30%!
• Pending sales dropped 43% versus 2008
• The number of Lake Norman homes that sold in the first three months of 2009 dropped 44% versus 2008
• Because our sales volume dropped substantially but our inventory is about the same, the number of months of supply of active listings we have in Lake Norman is up to a whopping 41.8.  If you keep in mind that a balanced market is about 6-8 months of supply we in fact have 7 times the number of homes on the market than we should have given our drop in sales volume.

Lake Norman 1st Quarter Market Report by Price Range

 To read this chart, choose any price range and first note the number of sales compared to the active listings and then look at the % of the total number of listing and sales this price range represents to get an idea of where the strengths and weaknesses are in Lake Norman.

Example #1: The $200,000 - $299,999 price range represents 25.23% of our entire Lake Norman home sales and yet is only 11.83 % of our listings.  This is a very strong price range although with 175 active listings and only 28 sales which is an 18.8 months of supply of active listings there are still about 3 times the number of listings for a balanced market.

Example #2: The $1,000,000 - $1,249,999 price range represents 5.4% of our sales yet only 4.14% of our inventory.  Despite the low sales number and high inventory, this is our hottest price range of home sales above $400,000.

If you are a buyer, look at your price ranges to learn how much inventory there is versus the the number of sales.  This insight will help you better understand the Lake Norman real estate market in your price range and assist you when determining how to write up an offer.

If you are a seller on the cusp of two price ranges, let's say between the high $300,000s or the low $400,000s you would be well advised to list in the $300,000s where there is slightly less inventory and almost double the number of sales.

It is interesting to note that 61.27% of our Lake Norman homes sales in the first quarter 2009 were under $400,000 and 81.1% under $600,000.  With our conforming loan limits at $417,000, it is clear that those that can get the great interest rates are buying while the difficult jumbo loans have had a negative impact on our higher end homes.

Finally, here is the 5-year comparison by month.  As you can see, March sales were down -41% versus March 2008 and -330% versus March 2007.

5-Year Comparison of Lake Norman Home Sales By Month 

* Please note that all of my numbers come from the Charlotte Region Multiple Listing Service and will not include sales that took place outside of our MLS.

**While my totals on this chart for 2008 sales is 870, when I search on our MLS for the entire year they give me a slightly higher number of 916 so I will use that as our official number for the sake of this analysis.

I hope these charts provide you with the knowledge you need whether buying or selling here in Lake Norman.  If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me!