Augusta Real Estate Market Report - Oct 24, 2008
Lydia Taylor October 24th, 2008
This morning, I took a look through the Augusta MLS to see the number of residential listings for sale today. Then I compared the numbers to my last Augusta real estate market report, which was on April 7th.
Richmond County: 1641, 1591, 3% less homes
Columbia County: 1464, 1568, 6% more homes
Aiken County: 534, 493, 8% decrease in homes for sale
Edgefield County: 68, 67, slight decrease
Augusta, Georgia: 1273, 1240, 2.6% fewer homes
Evans, Georgia: 601, 604, slight increase
North Augusta, SC: 316, 301, 5% less homes for sale
Aiken, SC: 125, 115, 8.7% less homes for sale
[First # is the number of homes for sale on April 7th, 2nd number is homes for sale today, followed by % change.]
The inventory is static or decreasing throughout our area. But one of the most desirable areas that I cover, that being Evans / Columbia County, shows increasing inventory. This is a trend we’ve seen for a while now.
In Augusta there has been an influx of large companies coming into the area over the last year, with hundreds of new jobs being created. That certainly helps explain the decreasing inventory in that area and North Augusta.
Decreasing inventory is great for home owners & sellers, as home values start to rise. Less inventory is bad for buyers and of course your humble real estate professionals, who fight for a smaller slice of the pie. But hey, the cream always rises to the top, does it not? I welcome competition :-).
One thing I have seen is that the rental market is staying strong. While I don’t handle rentals, it’s not unusual to get several queries a week about them. Despite interest rates being low, and the housing market offering lots of inventory at great pricing levels, many people still choose to rent. It’s a perfect storm for landlords- being able to increase their number of units at low pricing levels with strategic buys, and keep them occupied. I work with several high volume landlords, and they are certainly taking advantage of great interest rates to increase their holdings.
As always - when selling anything in a highly competitive market - marketing and pricing mean everything.
Promotion of my listings over a number of websites is one thing I do, along with a competitive market analysis to make sure I set the price right. I make up fancy flyers to distribute around the area & make available for web users to download. Often times I’ll even go door-knocking around the neighborhood to see if the neighbors have any friends looking to relocate. I also send out an email to the thousands of registrants to www.NorthoftheSavannah.com. Usually within 24 hours of promoting a property online, I can get several hundred interested buyers looking at it, resulting in several in-person showings during the next few days.
I also have a fine-tuned network of fellow Realtors that I leverage in my seller’s favor. For my recent listing on Barbara Lane, I managed to show the home to over 40 real estate agents on the first day of listing. I’d say that’s EXPOSURE!
If you want to list a home in the area, please give me a call at 803-270-5005 or contact me for a listing presentation. You can also contact my buyer’s agent, Susan MacEwen, at 706-294-6795. Either of us would be glad to answer questions or help you with your real estate needs.
- Market Reports
- Comments(8)
Lydia,
The observations that you’ve made about inventory are interesting and, as you’ve noted, may be an encouraging sign for home owners & sellers. However, could there be other market factors at play that are influencing inventory stats? These include:
1. An anoemic economy has driven home prices down and has begun to dissuade certain home owners and potential sellers from placing their homes on the market.
2. The rental market is remaining strong as many of those who would be first-time home buyers are having a difficult time securing the finances to purchase and therefore continue to rent.
In an economy such as ours, it seems that there could be many factors
affecting inventory statistics. I, too, would like to think that your observations are positive signs for the market.
If the fed keeps putting money into new mortgage paper with Fannies and Freddie, the money will eventually hit the market. So far it is only hitting in the conforming mortgages. I wrote about 10 weeks ago for the fed to borrow on long term treasury’s and put the money directly into new mortgages at low rates to get the market going. I also said they should provide investor financing to get the foreclosed homes bought and rented. Investor will bring a lot of capital to the market. All buyers must qualify under normal standards.
My investigation also finds the heavily hit markets are reacting to the lower prices and lower rates and volume is picking up nicely.
The banks can not get the money directly, they won’t lend or at least not at the rate and quantity we need. When a purchaser gets a mortgage, buys a property, the old mortgage gets paid off to the bank. The bank receives the money and the mortgage is retired. If the bank’s reserves are too short to retire the mortgage, that is another issue for their solvency.
That is good that it is getting good and positive results. I am happy for you people. Because nothing is picking up here at all. Everything is crashing and prices are falling everyday. So many incentives to buyers are being introduced but still the market is dead. We even tried putting up videos of houses and apartments everywhere so that buyers can sit at home and look at the places but even after doing that no responses at all. Good luck to you!
Regards,
Michael McLaughlin, Cary real estate
Means not all areas are being affected by the downturn in real state. So if one are have less inventory have a much higher price than those are that have increasing inventory. Well, that is really good for home owners, because their home value is not affected and they are saved from foreclosures. Yes, less inventory is bad for new home owner searcher and for agents. Cheers, Michael McLaughlin, Cary real estate
Ok I know that there is still tons of bad news out there and plenty of reasons to believe it but here are a few things that MIGHT indicate that the real estate market is starting to firm up in Phoenix.
1. A mortgage lender friend of mine says that April will be his best month since 2005.
2. I wrote purchase contracts on two different properties today and received offers on two different listings this weekend. This constitutes the busiest weekend I have had in four years. One of the offers I received was for full price.
3. My wife, an escrow officer, says that April will be her busiest month since 2005. About 50% of the transactions are refinancing of existing mortgages and 50% purchase contracts. Yes, most of the contracts are of lower priced foreclosures but its still promising to see that so many people believe prices now “make sense”.
4. We have received more buyer leads over the last two weeks than we have in four years.
5. We are finding properties priced low enough that one can easily enjoy positive cash flow if they buy and then rent the property out.
I’m not saying that we can now declare that the bust is over and full steam ahead but if things keep going in this direction we very well may be seeing the beginning of a recovery.
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Good post on Augusta real estate report. I did come across a blog WGCommunities.com. It has wonderful information on community building and investing in real estate. Hope it will be helpful for you guys too.
Thanks,
Roy Peter - Real estate marketing
Your marketing plan sounds good.
I can tell you from experience that the door-knocking strategy always works. Sometimes it takes longer than other times, but you will always end up with something. It is also the best way to get to know potential home sellers.