| Summerville's real estate is HOT |
The real estate market in Charleston and Summerville (actually all 3 counties) in 2015 was awesome and
record setting. It was the 3rd
busiest year ever in sales. We sold
15,486 residential units with a record median sales price of $235,000. Back in the crazy days of 2007, we sold
18,000 units but the median sales price was only $210,000. The best news is that we are still
undervalued and have lots of room for appreciation. My trend line back to 1991 shows that we should
be above $250,000 right now, but we are still making up lost ground from the
recession years of 2008-2011. Another
important note is that prices only increased about 5.5% over 2014. That’s great, but more importantly it’s
reasonable and shows that the tighter lending practices put in place after the
recession have been doing their job of keeping things under control.
We set an all time record in the spring with over 400
properties going under contract in one week and repeated that feat 4 times
during the spring. Generally, any time
200 properties go under contract in a week is considered a very good week. 36 of the 52 weeks had over 300 under
contract and only the first and last week of the year had under 200.
Our current inventory is very low with less than 5000 homes
for sale. I haven’t seen a number like
that since 2007. At the height of the
recession we had over 11,000 homes for sale and were only selling about 8500 per
year. Overall months of inventory(MOI)
is below 4. Six months of inventory
represents a balanced market. So, this
is certainly a sellers market.
People from all over the world are moving here to make
Charleston their home. We’ve gotten a
lot of positive press including being voted number one city in the world to visit
and number one city in the US for 4 consecutive years. Boeing has been the big job producer but
there is also a new Volvo plant coming.
And the Silicon Harbor label has just gotten stronger with several
hundred software companies calling Charleston home. So, new construction has become very popular
to these newcomers since inventory is so low. And the boundary of our area seems to be
going further out with new communities popping up on the outskirts of the edges
in Summerville, Mt Pleasant, and rural West Ashley. If you have not checked our new Summerville Communities such as Nexton, Carnes Crossing, Summer's Corner, etc you should - they are pretty impressive. New construction now makes
up over 41% of what we currently have under contract. Short sales and foreclosures, leftovers from
the recession, are fairly insignificant now.
They only total 4% of our active inventory and only make up
about 8% of what’s under contract.
What does 2016 hold in store for us? I see more of the same as 2015. Lots of people moving here and lots of new
construction. Maybe we’ll set a record
for sales this year with over 18,000 units sold. I would imagine that median sales price will
again rise a modest 5-6%, limited somewhat by the tighter lending
practices. We have a new mayor here in Summerville and Charleston has a new mayor for the
first time in 40 years. Mayor Joe Riley
has left us in the very capable hands of John Tecklenberg and Mayor Collins has been replaced by now Mayor Wiley Johnson. We have new businesses and restaurants popping up all over town and this means more families will call us "home." We are so blessed to live in this great town of Summerville and so close to the Holy City of Charleston - America's number one city.
If you'd like to know what your home may be worth, how to stage it better to sell or interested in up-sizing or downsizing let me know and I'd be happy to help you out.
-Jason
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