Greenville SC Real Estate - Upstate South Carolina Homes

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.)

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.

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.

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!

Real estate values are influenced by market cycles. The four main factors that influence value are the physical properties of an area, the economic outlook of an area, and the political and social atmosphere of the area.

The physical properties of the Greenville area including its location, climate, and topography, are very attractive to people who are looking to move to our area from out of town. For example, we have mountains and beautiful lakes within an hour’s drive, yet we’re not totally secluded and have good infrastructure. My prediction is that our resort style attraction will increase throughout the year.

The Greenville area economy is extremely robust at the moment, and growth prospects look pretty good. We are quickly establishing ourselves as an outpost for the automotive industry, and Greenville has long been famous for having a high ratio of engineers per capita. I’ll talk more about that in a future post.

From a political standpoint, the upstate is very attractive to businesses looking to migrate to this area. Our governments are quiet business friendly and there are many tax incentives to those businesses that can qualify. With all of the new businesses coming into the area, the economy is being influence in a positive way with high job growth and low unemployment.

Finally, on the social standpoint, Greenville is doing a good job of attracting all different types of demographics, including a young pen, highly educated workforce.

I will elaborate more throughout the year on all of these aspects, but wanted to go ahead and build a base and general reference guide to the four main components of what drive market cycles in the real estate industry.