There hasn’t been a lot to write about real estate in Pickens County lately. We are mostly just bumping along on the bottom and wondering when things will get better. The headlines we see say things are getting better, but sometimes it’s hard to swallow, even for someone like me who tends to be more optimistic.
When people ask me (basically daily) how things are “going”, I usually say I have no complaints. I would like for things to pick up for everyone trying to sell, but that situation presents opportunities for smart buyers. However, a closer look at our county reveals at least two market segments, and maybe three, with differing seller challenges.
I decided to investigate the Pickens market by separating Big Canoe and Bent Tree numbers from the total for the county. What I found was very surprising, mostly since I do not work in Big Canoe because I believe it is a special market, and I don’t live there. If one only looks at sales, it would appear that homes in Big Canoe are selling okay for now. But when you look deeper, the picture is different. Now, before anyone tries to interpret this as saying there is something wrong with Big Canoe, there isn’t, but real estate is local, and “local” sometimes changes in a city block. I’m just trying to give sellers a picture of the real market they deal with in the county.
The chart shows that Pickens has a total of 465 homes for sale, but when we take out Big Canoe and Bent Tree, there are only 130 homes left for sale. Those numbers come from Trendgraphics, not me, and that is pretty amazing. The fact that Bent Tree has 99 for sale is also significant.
It is interesting to note that the year over year trends for listings, sales, and pending contracts appear to be heading in different directions for the county versus the two communities. The sale price per square foot overall indicates the current buyer mindset, which is “buy cheap or cheaper”. Pricing is no doubt affected by the staggering number of foreclosures diluting the market. The biggest numbers I see are the number of months of supply we have at the current rate of sales. That means if 10 houses are selling each month, and there are 50 homes on the market (not adjusting for additions and subtractions) there is 5 months of inventory. While Pickens shows 30.6 months of inventory total, when the 48 months of inventory for the two communities is removed, the inventory for the rest of the county shrinks to 14.5 months.
It is important for sellers to understand that if their home is selling slowly, in most cases it’s not about something wrong with the home. It’s the market. Selling anything is about time or money; less money usually means quicker sale time. Hopefully this information will prove helpful to those trying to deal with this “mother of all bad markets” we face.
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