Lake Norman Real Estate and NC Homes for Sale

So, it's 100 degrees outside today, June 10th, in the greater Lake Norman area.  A great day to stay inside and crunch some housing numbers.  As I was thinking of the rather gloomy U.S. economy, it reminded me of the term we used in LA for our June weather due to the daily morning fog: "June Gloom".  But is the real estate market in Lake Norman really gloomy?

It's been about 4 weeks since my last update on our Lake Norman housing market.  While I always find it interesting to look at and play with the latest numbers from our Charlotte Regional Multiple Listing Service, this time I was very curious to see what I could learn because recently there have been some singular but promising events:

• I listed a home in the high $400,000's, a traditionally weak price range and we had an accepted offer in less than 3 weeks!
• The highest priced homes in Lake Norman are selling again; the most recent @ $10,500,000.
• I am reading blog posts on ActiveRain from agents in some of the hardest hit areas of our country talking about signs of improvement in their markets.

Are these aberrations or in fact the first signs of positive change?

The first report I pulled was the "hot sheet" for the past two weeks which I compared to prior  "hot sheets" from this year.  Our "hot sheets" give us a 2-week summary of new listings, listings that are back on the market, price changes, pending, contingent, conditional sales and number of closed sales.

• New Listings:   At 149 this is the second lowest number this entire spring
• Back On Market:   At 55 this is the highest number I have for the spring
• Price Changes:   At 243 this is also the highest number so far this year
• Pendings:   At 47 this is in the middle of a range of 37 to 52
• Contingent & Conditional:   At a combined total of 19 this again falls in the middle range for this season.

 Then I pulled the numbers for the entire Lake Norman area and compared them to prior reports:

Finally, I compared our listings sold or closed in the past 30 days to the same period in 2007:

2008:  88 properties sold

2007:  166 properties sold

% Change  = -47% drop in number of housing units sold

The Good News:

• The number of new listings coming on the market is dropping
• The number of price changes is increasing showing that sellers are getting more realistic
• The overall Lake Norman housing market is not getting worse but seems to have stabilized

The Bad News:

• The number of properties sold is down 47% versus the same period of 2007
• Our inventory is still very high at about 20 months of supply on hand
• Our average days on the market has gone up
• By June of 2007 the market had started to drop so we are comparing 2008 to an already weakening period of 2007

All and all, our housing market seems to have stabilized.  Now we wait and watch for positive signs indicating that the worst is behind us!

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