Lake Norman Real Estate and NC Homes for Sale

Today The Charlotte Observer ran yet another front-page article about our housing market "Home prices soften anew....Sales and building permits also fall, but the Charlotte market is still healthier than many in the U.S."   It's not a bad article.  It even breaks down the sales % decline and building permit % decline by county.

However, I can't stress enough the importance of every home buyer asking their real estate agents to do comprehensive research about the specific listing (and even subdivision if feasible) before they make an offer on a home.  Think of it as a background check of the home and its Lake Norman housing community.

For the sake of this article I am going to use Lake Norman's Crescent Homes Community:  The Farms.  However, you can do this exact analysis on any home and community throughout the Lake Norman area and I assume throughout the country depending on the MLS data available.

Case Study: The Farms in Lake Norman

Step One:

Do a quick search on the MLS for the past three months including the number of active listings, pendings and solds.  The Farms currently has 41 active listings, 1 contingent sale and 11 homes sold since May 16, 2008.  This means that at the current rate of sales The Farms has about an 11-month supply of inventory.  That's actually much better than most of our subdivisions and overall Lake Norman real estate statistics.

Step Two:

This is probably THE MOST IMPORTANT step in this process.  Do an "Archive" search on each for the properties sold in the past 3 months AND the home you are thinking about purchasing.  An archive search in our MLS database tells us the entire history of the property including previous sales, the actual initial listing date, the actual initial lisitng price, the number of price reductions and the final sales price.  This is the only way to find out the real MLS listing data for a given property.  (Even this is only as accurate as our MLS so there will be errors.)

Step Three:

Using this archive information, calculate the actual days on the market and the actual % of the sales price versus the first listing price for each comparable property.  This is what I found about the 11 sales at The Farms:

* Note:  Sales 6-11 were new construction so the days on market include contruction time

Step Four:

Do an assessment of the currently active listings to gain a perspective about the overall community's strength and weaknesses and the competition within the subdivision.  Here is what I found out about The Farms after doing such an assessment:

• 7 are bank-owned
• 2 are offering a lease/purchase option
• 30 are vacant...most are new construction but several are resale

I also found out out:  The Sales Office has been moved to The Point community down the road despite the fact that there are two more phases to be built.  And, lock boxes are now on the new homes so Realtors can use lock boxes to access for showings rather than having a sales rep with them.  Finally, they are now requiring that each of their feature builders only have ONE home in the process of being built, down from two when they opened this subdivision several years ago.  All of these are signs of the weaker home sales and economy.  This is a great neighborhood and Crescent Communities is THE developer of Lake Norman but even they are cutting back for now.

Step Five:

Before making on offer there is one more thing to do if this is a re-sale home:  research the tax records to find out as much as possible about the current owners:  When did they buy, what was the purchase price,and,  if possible, what is the loan amount.

Summary:

Based upon the above data, I would conclude that while there is not an over abundance of listings, the majority of the sales have been new construction especially in the higher price range so resales in this community may have to be more flexible in price.  Good homes (good location, lot, home floorplan and amenities) are selling for about 5% less than the listing price.  However, if a home is overpriced the overall listing to selling price drops significantly, both with new and resale homes.

I would give this background information to my buyers so that they can make an informed decision about what price to offer on a property.  

RELATED ARTICLES

Lake Norman Waterfront Homebuyers:  Before Buying, See it by Boat!

Lake Norman Real Estate:  What does the closing attorney do?

Relocating to Lake Norman:  What to consider before buying real estate Part 1 

Relocating to Lake Norman: What you should know before buying real estate Part 2 

Relocating to Lake Norman: What you should know before buying real estate: Part 3

Relocating to Lake Norman: What you should know before buying real estate: Part 4

Relocating to Lake Norman: What you should know before buying real estate: Part 5

What you need to know about buying real estate in North Carolina  

I hear it all of the time from my Lake Norman home buyers:  They simply can't find an effective way to search for homes that are for sale in the Lake Norman area.  They try Realtor.com, all of the major national franchise sites and even local sites but simply get frustrated.  Many times they use a combination of sites just to get the information they are looking for.  Well, I am here to tell all Lake Norman area home buyers to STOP SEARCHING!

The Charlotte Regional Multiple Listing Service which encompasses Mooresville and the entire Lake Norman area, provides a home buyer system called "Gateway" that enables me to create a custom search(s) for my buyers with their own website where they can prioritize their custom list of active homes for sale, delete the ones they don't like, make comments about the ones they do and even share information back and forth with me.   

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Okay, so I admit it, I love showing waterfront property here on Lake Norman by boat.  (The above picture is of my skipper/husband while we are waiting for my clients to arrive.) Not a bad way to spend a beautiful day! 

However, in all seriousness, it is extremely important, particularly for out-of-towners, to give waterfront buyers a tour of Lake Norman by boat after narrowing down their search a bit but BEFORE making an offer.  Here are just some of the reasons why:

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The ultimate buyer of my listing saw it on May 6th (thanks to the photos on the Internet) and intended to write an offer that day but they wanted to write a contingency in for a pool which my clients and I would not accept.  On May 23, just a day after getting confirmation from the county that they could build a pool, they presented an offer.  On May 25, the final details of the offer were accepted by all.  We closed the sale successfully on June 30th.

So how did we do it during such a tough real estate market here in Lake Norman?  There was no magic involved but rather a lot of hard work, a savvy seller and just a little bit of luck:

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At the very end of a cul-de-sac in the popular Lake Norman subdivision of Northington Woods sits a lot full of dreams.  Imagine owning a 5.26 heavily wooded acres of land with its own stream in an upscale Lake Norman waterfront community! 

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