Charleston, SC Real Estate Market Update Feb. 22, 2010

Aug 14th 2010

Posted By: Brian Beatty @ 9:13am In: Market Update

As a whole, we are seeing consistently more activity in the market. The Pending Sales Index for Charleston, a leading indicator of closing data, is up to 1878 units (nearly 430 higher than on January 1). Web traffic and volume is much higher now than in January or December.

The inventory has climbed from just under 9000 units for sale on January 1 to 9577 as of today, which shows that the major source of our problem (excessive and distressed inventory) has not peaked. In other words, we are not at the bottom yet in relation to prices.

Where we have hit bottom is in overall distress. It's not so much the "skeleton in the closet" that we're dealing with now, it's just the sheer volume of foreclosures, short-sales, distressed sales and must-sales combined with an unpredictable (and fluctuating) buyer demand. This will take the Charleston market about one year more to "burn off" so that we can hit a firm bottom and about two years before we can achieve "normal" again. As a definition, normal in a real estate market like Charleston is about 5% annual appreciation in home values.

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