Well, another week, another post on what is going on in the Beaufort real estate market.
All in all, this is still a great time to buy. Although mortgage rates have started to tick up, and certainly that is the long term direction for rates, they are still at or near historic lows.
There were 870 homes for sale in the greater Beaufort area as of Monday Nov 22, 2010. About 15% of these were either short sales or foreclosures, and both of those categories have inched higher in the last couple of weeks.
There were 60 homes under contract, of about 7% of the active market. This is as high a number as we have had since late September and early October. However, as you can see from the chart below, the overall trend for under contract homes is still down.
So what does this mean? Two things really- 1) if you are a buyer, this is an absolutely golden window of opportunity to buy, but the window is starting to close. When rates go up, they will probably move strongly, and they won't be this low for probably the rest of our lives.
Second, if you are contemplating selling right now, you have to be IN THE GAME!! This is NOTthe environment for those that are thinking "well, I don't really have to sell right now...." because there are too many that really do have to sell right now. If you are putting your house on the market now, you need to CLEAN it, STAGE it, and allow it to be shown WHEN THE BUYER wants to see it. Otherwise, save yourself and your agent some stress and wait this dance out. You really need to be the best of the best.
The good news is that if you ARE the Best of the Best, you will probably get around 95% of what your asking price is, and this weeks discount on list prices was tiny- less than 2%!
Enough numbers for now... as always, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to call or email.
Please take time this week to give thanks for the really important things in our lives: the people we love and that love us, and the time we have to spend with them. Remember, you can always make more money, you can always get more stuff, but will never get more time. Use the present wisely!!
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