If you are looking to buy real estate in Greenville County, there is an indispensable tool available online that will allow anyone to view what a property sold for in the past. Not all sales are there, but many are. For homebuyers, knowing what a seller paid can provide leverage and insight.
Check out the Greenville County Real Estate Search feature at GreenvilleCounty.org!
The Dow Jones hit 13,000 today. Great news, but how are home prices and sales going? These are questions that any homeowner is interested to know about. You may guess that Greenville Real Estate is a different animal than the national averages you hear about in the media - but how are we faring?
As of April 24th, sales in Greenville are down just less than 40% less than this time last year. IE From January of 2006 to this time in 2006, almost 40% more homes sold than did this year. This covers the Greenville MLS which is heavily weighted to Greenville county but does cover real estate in nearby markets such as Anderson, Easley, Spartanburg, Lake Keowee, and even some beach homes, though not many.
There are currently 5,990 homes for sale. For every home sold, there are two more going on the market (over the last seven days - this is a bit of a slow down in the trend.)
Keller Williams Realty (my brokerage, with over 72,000 agents) doesn’t spend a dime on national consumer advertising while other real estate companies (such as ReMax and C21) spend tens of millions of dollars a year.
Yet Swanepoel Trends Report 2007, which was recently published by industry trend watchers, RISMedia, ranks Keller Williams Realty among the top five established real estate franchise brands.
I am proud to work for a company that has good values: “God, Family, then Work” and am happy that they are becoming more highly recognized nationwide.
I wanted to report on some current market statistics.
First, for Simpsonville Real Estate as a whole:
We have just at 750 active listings (residential - single family home) which translates to over six months worth of inventory. That is, in the last six months, only 555 homes have sold in Simpsonville. The market, while hot in some pockets, is not what it was recently.
Greenville stats are similar: 1,010 sold homes in the past six months. Current inventory is at 1,199 homes.
Mauldin Real Estate: 96 sold in six months, 116 currently active.
What do these stats mean for you?
If you’re a seller, you need to understand that we have six months worth of inventory to sell - it is somewhat of a buyer’s market. Some neighborhoods have as much as one to two years worth of active listings. Touch base with your agent and find out what pricing strategies you should be employing.
If you’re a buyer, have your agent do a CMA on the homes you are interested in and find out what typical offer-to-list-price values have been recently accepted. NEVER look back more than six months unless there is no activity AT ALL - then use one year. Appraisals use six months, so shoot for six months.
Thanks for reading.
Today I was coming home from showing a home in the Augusta Road Area when I called some friends who were at Oyster’s Low Country Bar near the new 155 RiverPlace development. I had a bit of trouble finding it at first because it is kind of unmarked (well hard to see). Once you find the bar 1/2 block off of main street, it is a nice place. They have done a great job of recreating the lowcountry atmosphere in Greenville. They have a huge porch, which I think is a really good idea. Still haven’t tried the Oysters yet - but I will. I’ll update you faithfully!
In order to add this blog to the directory, I needed to link to my Technorati Profile. That is what I am doing. 
If you’ve ever spent an hour or two on a Saturday afternoon sitting on Woodruff Road between Roper Mountain Road and Five Forks, wondering who to blame for the massive traffic, I have an answer for you. Some of the worst congestion is between Highway 385, and Highway 14. It didn’t used to be this way – I and others keep telling ourselves. Is Greenville’s growth to blame? Hardly. In fact, over 35 zoning changes in 25 years are to blame.
The common scapegoat for traffic problems is the Greenville County planning commission. The truth is, the planning commission is less to blame than many think. In 12 of the aforementioned 35 rezoning cases, the planning commission had denied zoning changes, only to be overridden by the Greenville County Council.
What prompted the Greenville County Council to override the planning commission’s professional advice, I don’t know. What I do know is that the zoning changes on Woodruff Road have created a horrible mess at certain times of the day and week.
To me the most important piece of advice is avoid much of Woodruff Road on weekends or whenever possible. While there is lots of good shopping, it certainly pays to learn the back roads including Garlington Road and Miller Road.
What Greenville needs most is a parallel route to Woodruff Road. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s possible given the geography and current zoning. Luckily, the growth appears to be slowing and Woodruff Road is pretty well saturated with businesses.
I live in the Woodruff Road area, and I am an advocate of all the opportunities it offers to the economy of Greenville. My only wish is that the Greenville County Council would’ve taken the planning commissions advice on the 12 developments that were turned from residential to commercial
The National Association of Realtors just released its annual report showing both housing appreciation and depreciation in major metropolitan areas across the United States. This report compares values from the fourth quarter of 2006 to the fourth quarter of 2005. Two cities in North Carolina were featured in this report of the top 25 biggest gainers in the United States. In sixth place in the entire United States was Raleigh, North Carolina with 14.5% appreciation and a median sales price of $226,000. The Charlotte area came in at 20th place with an 8% appreciation and a median price of $198,000.
No cities and South Carolina were ranked in the biggest gainers or the biggest losers between 2005 and 2006. However, because of our close proximity to Charlotte, many upstate real estate markets tend to mirror the Charlotte market very closely. A recent article in Fortune forecasted the South Carolina real estate values, particularly in Greenville, to appreciate between five and 6% in 2007.
Time will tell.
I wanted to relay to you a quick story I recently heard about a real-life real estate horror story right here in Greenville South Carolina. I’ll make it short and sweet, but make sure what I’m about to tell you sticks with you when it’s time for you to buy your new home.
When I say new home, I mean, a newly constructed homes that has never had anyone living in it before. That sounds pretty safe, not needing an inspection, correct? Maybe not.
In 2006 there were over 4000 building permits issued in Greenville County for new home construction. That’s a lot of new homes that people are moving into. If you don’t already have a buyer’s agent and you are looking to move into a new home, stop right here and get yourself a buyer’s agent. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that when you’re buying a new home direct way from the builder, having a buyer’s agent is probably more important than it is. When you’re buying an existing home. Anyway, many people opt not to get a brand-new construction inspected prior to purchase. I am here to tell you that I think this is a bad idea. It is very important that you get your home inspected before purchasing, whether it’s 30 years old or brand-new.
In a particular story, I recently heard, a buyer here in Greenville, bought a new home and waved their right to get it inspected prior to purchase. They few months later, they noticed that there were foundation problems. When all was said and done the repair bill was over $30,000. Granted, they may have been able to get someone else such as the builder to pay this cost, but they still had to leave their home while the repairs were done. Spending that small investment it takes to get a home inspection done is one of the smartest things you can do.
Another story I heard about new home construction was one where the drainage for the sewer system was not connected to the city water system. Want to know where all of their sewage, what? Right under the house. They smelled it pretty fast. So when you go to buy that new home, keep these horror stories and mine and make the small investment to get your home inspected. And like I said, if you don’t have buyer’s representation and you’re looking to buy a new home, please get an agent. We would love the opportunity to serve you, so please give us consideration.
For those of us that track the housing market closely, some new data just came out this month indicating that the amount of vacant houses, as a percentage of the entire housing market, is at the highest level it’s ever been in recorded history. The speculation, if you will, is that speculators in the housing market have driven the number of vacant houses way up. Prior to 2006, the number of vacant houses had never exceeded 2%. As of February of 2007 the level was at 2.7%.
Please read more…
What does this mean for consumers? My analysis shows that consumers (home buyers) will not be drastically affected by the fact that the percentage of vacant houses on the market is at a higher level. For buyers, there is the possibility of perhaps getting a little bit better deal if buying from a speculator who is panicking and wanting to get out of the market more quickly. I think this scenario is fairly unlikely, but the potential for it to exist is there.
As the saying goes, 80% of statistics are incorrect. There’s a pretty good chance also that this statistic is inflated, because more and more people have second homes as vacation homes. While vacation homes should not be recorded in this statistic, the Census Bureau could have possibly recorded some vacation homes as vacant homes accidentally. Obviously this would skew the numbers higher than they really are. My opinion is that it is a more likely scenario. While the amount people who are getting into flipping homes has increased, and do not think it has been enough to make the numbers go up as high as they are today.
I don’t have the statistics on places like Mauldin Real Estate in SC, but I will be looking into this and getting the numbers for you as quickly as possible.
Only time will tell but for consumers or even investors in the housing market, I just wanted to make you aware of the statistic, but not harp on it for too long. Have a nice day and if you have any questions please e-mail me and I’ll be glad to help!