Charleston SC Area is in the Top 5 for Real Estate Markets to Fare Best in 2010

Home Buyers in Goose Creek, Ladson, Summerville, North Charleston, Hanahan, Mount Pleasant, and the rest of the Charleston SC area need to buy now while interest rates are low, lots of homes for sale, and home prices are. With the latest news it appears the real estate market in the Charleston SC area has started to bottom out or has hit bottom.

Home Sellers in the Charleston SC area need to get their homes listed on the market now.  Because if you need to sell, time is money and the longer you wait the longer you pay the mortgage and greater chance of homes being added to the market (i.e. more homes on the market will drive prices lower). 

The expectations for next year are an estimate and 0.18% increase in home prices does not justify waiting for the market to return later in the year to sell your home.  Sell now and take advantage of this market by buying your next home.

After a dour year where housing prices fell more than 12% nationwide, will 2010 bring sunnier tidings?

By Lisa Scherzer - SmartMoney - Monday December 28, 2009 - The short answer: only a tad in a select few places but overall not really.

Yes, there have been pieces of good news over the past few months that have indicated a quiet, slow bottoming of real estate prices. For instance, sales of existing homes rose 7.4% in November from the previous month, the highest rate since February 2007, according to data from the National Association of Realtors released last week. The tax incentives for home buyers passed earlier this year along with historically low interest rates have no doubt nudged many buyers into the market.

Yet a recovery depends on several factors. At the top of the list is a turnaround in the labor market. More people going back to work will have a beneficial effect on household income and consumer confidence and would stabilize the housing market, says Stuart Gabriel, director of UCLA’s Ziman Center for Real Estate. As of November, one of out every 10 American workers is unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And while that’s down slightly from October, Moody’s expects the jobless rate to peak in the third quarter next year at 10.6%.

Another factor is the backlog in foreclosures, which are dragging down values and adding to the housing supply. “By all accounts, that backlog is at a historic high,” says Gabriel. “It suggests that many more homes will be sold on a distressed basis either via foreclosure or short sale.”

RealtyTrac, an online marketplace of foreclosure listings, estimates 3.2 million households will have received a foreclosure notice in 2009, up from 2.3 million in 2008. The firm projects that number could approach four million in 2010. “We do think 2010 will probably represent the peak, and in 2011 [foreclosures] will start to go down at least marginally,” says Rick Sharga, senior vice president at RealtyTrac. Why the acceleration next year? First, says Sharga, there have been enormous delays in processing this year. Many homes that would have gone into foreclosure in 2009 won’t actually enter and complete the process until 2010.

Second, a big wave of option adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) will reset next year. (These are a somewhat obscure category of ARMs that were popular during the real estate boom, which allowed borrowers to make a range of monthly payments. The options include a partial-interest payment that adds the unpaid interest to the loan's balance. On many of the loans, balances have risen while values of the underlying properties have plummeted.) “The number of loans that will adjust starts to go up significantly in the middle of next year. A lot of those loans are underwater...and owners will be really hard-pressed to avoid going into foreclosure,” Sharga says.

Home prices, of course, are variable and depend on many factors, each of which are difficult to predict. Still, average home prices will drop by 7.9% nationwide in 2010, according to Moody’s Economy.com. In the few areas where there could be positive price growth, the projected increase is modest. “These areas will essentially be flat next year,” says Steve Cochrane, managing director at Moody’s Economy.com.

The five areas that Moody’s foresees home prices performing best in 2010 are: Tacoma, Wash., (an increase of 2.44%); Memphis, Tenn., (up 0.99%); Pittsburgh (up 0.89%); Charleston, S.C. (up 0.18%); and Seattle (decline of 0.50%). (These five markets are culled from data on Moody’s Economy.com and based on the largest 100 metro areas.)