News

Home sales tilting toward seller's market

Mid-priced homes like the ones at Wolf Chase are selling fast.

By Bill Moss, Published: November 23, 2015

A sizzle in real estate sales is moving Henderson County into a seller’s market for the first time in nine years, real estate agents say.

Third quarter sales figures show the inventory dropping and home prices rising while days on market declined across most price ranges compared to the third quarter of 2014. The median sales price of $210,000 was up from $188,800 last year while the number of houses on the market, 955, was down from 1,210 a year ago, a 21 percent drop. Cash sales dipped slightly, from 35 to 30 percent this year, and distressed sales were down to 5 percent of all transactions.
Missing from the third quarter report was any evidence that the proposed Duke Energy transmission line had stalled residential real estate sales.
“I didn’t see any of that,” said Hendersonville Board of Realtors President Tim Ertzberger of Weichert Realtors. “That was one of things that some people said was going to take place.” The threat had little impact on sales because “nobody really knew which path it was going to choose,” he said. “If it had gone forward and definitely gone in this (specific) place that might have happened.”
Beverly Hanks Hanks & Associates broker Steve Dozier said for all the public anxiety, the actual impact on sales was minimal.
“We did have some people who were talking about putting their house on the market and pulled back,” he said. “It was a concern to people. I had sold a house back in Livingston Farms and one of the proposed towers was going to go directly behind their house. This girl went to every meeting she could go to. Now it’s not an issue because they decided to change the plan.”

Mid-priced home sales hot

The $100,000-300,000 price range continued to be the strongest segment of the market, accounting for 72 percent of the closings from July through September.
“A strong seller’s market is present for homes priced under $400,000,” Beverly Hanks said in its quarterly market report. “An 11 percent increase in the median sales price, year over year, is one of the most robust in the region.”
Time on market ranged from just over three months for homes priced under $100,000 to more than four years for homes costing $1 million and up. Homes priced between $100,000 and $200,000 logged the most closings, at 117. Generally, the lower the home price, the lower the months’ inventory.
“Over the last two years we have seen an annual market rise of 3 to 4 percent each year and there is no reason to believe this will not continue,” Dozier said in a forecast. “The inventory of good marketable homes continues to decline and we are fast approaching a seller’s market for the first time since 2006 and 2007.”
“The forecast continues to look good,” Dozier said in an interview. “We are going into our slower months. We have a lot of closings in December but most of the closings actually started in November or late October. The only other concern we have right now is interest rates are probably going to creep up, not much, and it’s still record lows so it’s still a good rate.”
He cited the drop in the number of homes on the market as an important driver of sales. The inventory has fallen from 24-25 months in the recession to less than six months now. “So there has been a dramatic improvement in that time frame,” he said.

Housing starts double

The sales acceleration has dramatically lowered the supply of homes in the under $400,000 market.
“Inventory is still our problem,” Ertzberger said. “We still do not have enough inventory. Basically we’ve got more people wanting to move here than we’ve got a place to put them. For 2016 we’re looking at probably being up another 5 percent or so. It looks like that’s where we’re going to be nationally and we follow the national average pretty well. Hopefully we’ll get some more housing construction.”
That’s starting to happen in Henderson County.
Housing starts nearly doubled in the first 10 months of this year, the Henderson County Inspections Department reported. Contractors pulled permits to build 39 dwellings in October and 576 so far this year, up from 301 last year for a gain of 91.4 percent. Even so, there’s not much happening in spec homes.
“Windsor Aughtry is the only one in the game right now,” Dozier said. The Greenville, S.C.-based developer builds homes in the $150,000 to $300,000 range. “They’re selling them as fast as they can put them up.”

Commercial construction

In commercial construction, the total value of work declined compared to 2014. Although the 59 new commercial jobs so far this year was 25 percent ahead of last year, the overall value of commercial work, $3.7 million, came in 88 percent under the 2014 value of $30.5 million. The value of new residential and commercial construction together was $105 million, or 1.5 percent ahead of last year, through October. Remodeling work had a value of $32.4 million, a 1.2 percent drop from 2014, the Inspections Department reported.
In the first four months of the fiscal year that started on July 1, housing starts jumped by 42.5 percent over the same period in 2014 and new commercial work went up by 24.8 percent. Overall construction value for the first third of Henderson County’s fiscal year was $47.4 million, up 20 percent over the same period a year ago.