Lake Norman Real Estate: Friday Hot Sheet for August 8, 2008

LAKE NORMAN RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE HOT SHEET

August 8, 2008 

My third bi-monthly Lake Norman Friday Hot Sheet is here! 

Above is a chart with today's "hot sheet" numbers from the Charlotte Multiple Listing Services for all single family homes in Lake Norman (area 13).  For comparison, I have provided numbers from the past two weeks and earlier this year.  Here are some highlights:

• Unfortunately, the strong pending numbers from the last bi-monthly report did not result in an upward trend is sales.  Every single category dropped; some of this is good news and some may be attributed to our usual seasonal slowdown. 

• New listings were down again by about -13%. (We have too many homes for sale so a drop is a good thing right now).

• The number of listings coming back-on-the-market decreased by 22%... are we seeing an increase in home buyer confidence and an improvement in the home mortgage environment or is this due to our seasonal slowdown?

• The number of price changes has decreased by 8% which puts this number in the average range since early spring 2008.  I have seen some significant price reductions on homes I have been showing...sometimes as much as 10% or more. 

• Pending sales fell back to a more normal level.  I have checked the number from the last report several times and it appears to be correct but certainly those 61 pending home sales did not convert to a higher number of homes sold in the past two weeks. 

• Solds (home sales contracts that closed in the past two weeks) dropped by 10% from the high of 47 two weeks ago. The fact that the pending sales are down and the closed home sales are down is an indication that the last hot sheet was not the start of an upswing but rather an anomaly.

• Contingent and Conditional Sales were about the same...These would be Lake Norman home sales just put under contract...It would have been better to see these numbers higher as that would have indicated the market is improving.  We seem to have stabilized.  With the exception of July 25th, all of the numbers are fairly consistent with the first and second quarter of 2008. 

Overall, I would have to conclude that the upswing we saw on the July 25th report was not supported and in fact overall our numbers in all of the categories would be consistent with a minor seasonal slowdown.

In the news:

• This week the Charlotte Observer ran a follow-up article about the Charlotte building starts after the one a week ago about the drop in the national housing starts.  It confirmed that Charlotte area home builders which would include Lake Norman, "started 49% fewer homes during the second quarter, compared with the same period in 2007".  They went on to write:  "New-home closings fell nearly 40% in the second quarter 2008 but exceeded the number of housing starts, according to Metrostudy research....That is important because it means builders are cutting back in response to weak demand...."

• There was a front-page article two weeks ago in The Charlotte Observer "Area home sales fall faster than nation's...Buyers wait for better deals as experts wonder when the market will hit bottom."  This article is talking about our 2nd quarter home sales statistics which you might want to compare to my Lake Norman 2nd Quarter 2008 Sales Analysis.  (See link below!) 

The bottom line is we simply have too many homes for sale compared to the current levels of sales.  I was out showing property in The Farms today and out of 15 homes, there were 2 bank-owned and 6 were vacant.  We still have a ways to go!

Have a great weekend!

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