This year the prevailing trend has been low inventory, but this month a drop in home sales is bigger news. Sales have been dipping for the past five months, but this month there was a 15.3% drop from the same time last year.
These numbers are from the monthly report by the Charlotte Regional Realtor Association and are based on the data from the Carolina Multiple Listing Services, Inc. President of the CRRA Jason Gentry said “Without a doubt, sales in September were affected by Hurricane Florence, as local Realtors and community volunteers mobilized to assist homeowners who were reeling from flood and wind damage. The impact of the storm, just off the heels of weakened summer sales, helped to depress sales locally.”
The drop of 15.3% represented just 3,642 residential sales in September, which was down 19.3% from August. Year to date, sales are also down, though only by 1.8%.
Pending sales and new listings were down as well. Pending sales were down 6.6% year over year from 3,918 to 3,659. This is a decrease of 23.3% from August when there were 4,771 pending sales. New listings were down to 4,333 representing a decrease of 10.5%. This is a decrease of 1,327 from last month. Year-to-date new listings are down 1.2% compared to last year.
Supply of homes for sale in the Charlotte market also dipped from the same time last year. There is now a 2.5 month supply of homes down from 2.8 last year. There are just 10,210 homes for sale which is down 11.7% from last year but is up just slightly from last month’s 10,052.
Homes spend an average of five fewer days on the market in September than they did last year. This means that from list until contract was just 36 days. This is down 12.2% from the 41 days last year at this time.
In fact, the only thing going up in the entire report is sales prices. The average sales price went up to $281,533, up 5.2% from September of last year, though it was down 4.2% since last month. It remains to be seen if this is going to be the trend or if the market will recover after the worst of the storm damage is under control. That coupled with rising interest rates could keep the market slow until the spring.