TIGHTENING MARKET
ONE of the biggest factors in a changing market is
the number of active listings from which the
buyers have to choose.
“The story of 2018? The inventory was
absorbed throughout the course of the year to it being at
near record-level lows by the end of the year,” says Vance
Young.
Average days on market, the days a property was listed
until it sold, decreased in the counties by just one in New
Hanover, five in Brunswick and three in Pender; but the
averages of the numbers of days on market for the indi-vidual
towns and communities varied from a high of a
29 percent increase at Wrightsville, or 206 days, followed
by Porters Neck, with an increase of more than 26 percent,
or 116 days. Figure Eight Island’s DOM increased by a
modest 8 days to 197.
Landfall’s average dropped to 184, a 4.66 percent decrease
from the previous year. Pleasure Island, encompassing the
towns of Carolina and Kure beaches, saw a 14.29 percent
decrease in the average number of days it took to sell a
house last year, the lowest of the New Hanover beach towns.
“Definitely pre-storm we were getting low on inventory,
especially New Hanover County, even Brunswick County,”
Carla Lewis says. “Spring into summer, for the most part,
everything under $300,000 was very much in high demand,
and low supply, so you were getting into multiple offers. You
were able to tell your clients, you need to offer now. And if
they didn’t, the next day it was gone. It was that crazy.”
The tightening market, some say a seller’s-market, was
well underway in the three-county real estate market when
the storm hit.
“Before the storm, what was on everybody’s mind: we
were running out of inventory. It was low, lower than I have
seen it in ten years,” Lewis says.
The number of active listings did decrease across the
board: more than 41 percent at Porters Neck, 37 percent at
Wrightsville, 36 percent at Figure Eight, almost 23 percent
at Landfall.
“Properties at our low end, which make great rental
properties, are not on the market,” says Bryant Real Estate’s
Joe Muccia.
And it is not just the low end.
“Figure Eight has record low inventory right now. That’s
the driving force. We haven’t seen a huge bump in prices,
still not back to the record sales of year 2006-2007, but we
are getting close,” says Buzzy Northen.
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