How Many Homes For Sale are in Spartanburg County?

The amount of Spartanburg County homes for sale is at an all time high.  from June 2008 to June 2009 the amount of homes for sale in Spartanburg county increased 97%!!! from 1,877 to 3,590.  That increase was driven by a poor economy and easy credit standards allowing virtually anyone to buy a home. Read more..

How Many Times Does the Average Spartanburg Home Get Shown Per Month?

When a residential home seller has their home listed for sale on the market expectations for a sale are usually high at first and then wane with time.  Each passing day seems to dim the hope of a quick sale and creates doubt and frustration.  Thoughts such as:  Maybe we should paint the living area?  The front really needs to be pressure washed.  Should we reshingle the roof?  Honey, I told you we should have remodeled the bathroom!  and on and on the thoughts go.  Many times these thoughts are valid but often they are just over kill.

Irrespective of our hopes and doubts, what is the proper expectation a seller in Spartanburg county SC should have as to the number of physical showings per month.  We all know that zero is too low but how many is too high?  Read more..

Spartanburg County Home Showings for 2010

A precursor to Spartanburg home sales is the number of home showings in the Spartanburg market place.

This chart is a large sample of showings from an appointment setting service that schedules a significant amount of showings in the Spartanburg market.  Therefore, it can be considered an accurate sample size for the Spartanburg county home showing rate. Read more..

Home Buyer Tax Credit Extended to September 30, 2010

Home Buyer Tax Credit Extended for 2010

After a close brush with the deadline, Congress has passed an extension of the Home buyer Tax Credit closing deadline, the Home buyer Assistance and Improvement Act (H.R. 5623). The extension applies only to transactions that have ratified contracts in place as of April 30, 2010 that have not yet closed. The legislation is designed to create a seamless extension the new closing deadline for eligible transactions is now September 30, 2010.  There is will be no gap between June 30 and the date the President signs the bill into law.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) worked closely with Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle to enact this important legislation. Extending the Tax Credit Closing deadline will help provide additional stability to real estate markets across the nation.

Mortgage Rates Drop To Lowest Levels on Record!

Spartanburg Mortgage Rates at Historic Lows

With the government sponsored tax credits expiring on April 30th just about all real estate experts expected sales to drop off the proverbial cliff in the following months to come.  Those months to come were the traditional home buying and selling season too where we annually see the highest amount of sales per month.

Surprisingly, sales in Spartanburg and Boiling Springs areas of South Carolina have been strong.  In fact I have had all the business I could handle while getting the tax credit rush transactions closed.  This month in June we have put 4 more homes under contract.  Not bad considering the rush of buyers in March and April.

So, why is the real estate market staying so hot?  Read more..

How Long Does it Take to Sell a Home In Boiling Springs?

This is the question everyone wants to know when selling a home.  “How long will it take to sell my home?”  Beware of the person who has the fast and easy answer for you.  Unless they are willing to buy it themselves the fact of the matter is that no one can really know for sure.  What separates a salesperson from a consultant is the use of market facts.

In 2008 homes that sold took an average of about 120 days to sell, or 4 months.  2008 was just the beginning of the credit squeeze put on by lenders and loans became more and more difficult to get as large investors began to realize that their mortgage backed securities were not what they were told they were.  Fast forward to 2010 and we have those same large mortgage investors running from mortgage loan investments.  Because things got so bad, the government stepped in to buy mortgage loans as credit became tighter and tighter.  As a result, Days on Market (DOM) for homes that sold increased from 120 days in 2008 to about 160 days today.  Experts predict that DOM will increase going forward as the government recently announced that they will no longer be buyers of mortgages in the secondary market.  Speculation is that interest rates will have to rise to entice large investors back into buying these investments.  Increased interest rates will make the monthly cost of homes more expensive forcing some home buyers into smaller homes thus shrinking the buyer pool for larger homes and increasing the DOM for those homes.

However, the Spartanburg Board of Realtors data above only includes the Days On Market for homes that sold.  What about the homes that did not sell? Read more..

Spartanburg & Boiling Springs Home Values in 2009

Yesterday we looked at the long term trend of house values on a national basis and saw that home prices increased in value significantly.  We also discussed in the short term a trend will experience peaks and valleys, ups and downs if you will.  Today we will look at.  .  .

Spartanburg County Home Values for calendar year 2009.

In 2009 the national median home price declined 12%.  Compared to some of the swings we have seen in the DOW and other stock indexes this is a rather tame change after a period of such robust growth.  Long term annual price appreciation has been 4%.  While few like to see a pull back in values the decline is still a move towards the norm and a reflective market change considering government intervention into financing and job creation (or is it destruction?).

Locally Spartanburg home values decreased 9% and Boiling Springs house values decreased 9%.  I was not surprised to see the Boiling Springs value decrease 9% as I had been telling clients we have seen about a 10% decrease in our house values.  I was surprised that the Boiling Springs area did not outperform Spartanburg however as I expected a slightly larger decline here.  I suspect that Spartanburg felt the financial impact of the economic slow down earlier and reflected the price decrease in 2007 and 2008. Still our community as a whole significantly outperformed the national market over the last few years to the tune of being named the #3 market in the country!  Even with our strong performance over the last few years we still out performed the national market in 2009 decreasing 9% compared to 12% nationally.

I suspect we will continue to see downward price pressure locally with higher levels of inventory, some motivated sellers, and increasing interest rates shrinking the buyer pool leading the trend.  Still, our local market should continue to outperform the national housing market as South Carolina is an affordable, beautiful place to live that the rest of the country is still discovering.

Keep Looking Up     – Luke Ch21 Vs28

Rob

National House Value Trends Continue to Support Home Ownership

I was just sent the below housing trend chart from Tambie Caggiano at Prime Lending and thought it under scored a very important principle that serves as a great reminder to us with all the main stream negative news regarding the housing market.  That principle is that owning your own home can be the best investment one can make to build wealth and financial security. Read more..

Local Real Estate Market Outlook for 2010

Ok, no crystal balls, no magic hats, and no talking to spirit beings here. Just market observations and educated guesses for the Spartanburg county real estate market for 2010. It seems everyone is wondering where the real estate market will go in 2010. I’ve read rosy reports from main stream news to pessimistic sell everything now and leave the county perspectives. While nobody knows for sure the direction, we can at least be clear about what forces are most influencing our local market and predict trends for the short term.

Driver #1, the Tax Credit
During much of 2009 home showings lagged 2008 for the first 3 quarters of the year. Then, boosted by the First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit home showings spiked beyond 2008 making the total year showings measure about equal to each other. The original deadline for the tax credit was in November ’09 and then congress extended the credit until late April 2010. Make no mistake this is having a big impact on home sales. Additionally, congress extended the 10% tax credit to include home owners who lived in their home for 5 consecutive years over the last 8 years. I’ve talked to many buyers in this category as well.

Driver #2, Interest Rates

There has been much debate among experts as to the direction of interest rates.  While almost all agree they will go up in the long term the uncertainty lies in WHEN they will go up.  This “expert” predicts interest rates to go up in June 2010.  If we assume this is the case then the monthly cost to borrow money to buy a home will go up.  For example, a $150,000 home at 5.0% interest for 30 years in $805 a month.  The same home at 7% will cost $997.95 per month, a difference of almost $200/month.  (does not include tax 7 insurance) This will result in a few things: 1) force many buyers to purchase lower priced homes, Read more..

Finding and Buying Foreclosed and Distressed Real Estate

I’ve been asked a lot lately about buying Spartanburg foreclosures and Boiling Springs foreclosures. Was there an infomercial running on late night tv recently that I missed? I did hear one on the radio how you can get a 4 bedroom 2.5 bath house with over 2,500 square feet for only $3,500 US dollars! Wow what a deal. I’ll take a few of those thank you!

That last ad was in reference to local county tax auctions by the way. Anyway, the Boiling Springs and Spartanburg area has recently been listed as the #2 real estate market in the country. However, as stable as our housing market has been that is not to say there isn’t a deal to be had now and then. Below is a re-post of a foreclosure report I wrote about 2 years ago that is just as valid today as it was then.

One truth to real estate is that the best deals sell the fastest. What appears to be a great deal to you probably appears to be a great deal to somebody else as well. Will “somebody else” get to that deal before you do? Read more..

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