March 2014 Home Market Overview

Low Inventory Makes Headlines Heading into the Busy Season
Reprinted from CRRA Monthly Indicators, February 2014


During this year’s spring refresh, seller activity is the first item on the watch list. Low inventory has been a national headline grabber, and many are eager to see if this is the year that brings a bevy of new properties to market for ready-to-buyers. Investor activity and cash purchases should be monitored, as well, along with any increases in new construction. And although interest rates are up from their all-time lows, borrowing costs are still remarkably affordable. It’s cheaper to own than to rent in most of the country.

New Listings in the Charlotte region increased 4.6 percent to 5,211. Pending Sales were up 11.2 percent to 3,758. Inventory levels shrank 4.8 percent to 14,614 units.Prices marched higher. The Median Sales Price increased 2.4 percent to$172,000. List to Close was down 6.6 percent to 141 days.

Absorption rates improved as Months Supply of Inventory was down 11.3 percent to 5.1 months.Consumers are in better shape for the current financial landscape, just in time for the primary home-buying season. Along with an uptick in consumer confidence, GDP growth was revised up to 2.6 percent by the Commerce Department. Consumer spending has risen and claims for unemployment benefits have decreased. Economic health fuels housing market growth.Employed, confident people with rising incomes tend to purchase real property.

Lets talk about Foreclosures...

City permits for 260-unit First Ward apartment project

Levine Properties seeking permits for 260-unit First Ward apartment project

As reported By: Payton Guion, staff writer of the Meck Time 

 

CHARLOTTE – Local developer Levine Properties plans to start work this summer on a 260-unit apartment project in Uptown’s First Ward.
Brian Nicholson, director of construction and development with Levine, said the company will apply for building permits in May and expects to receive them within two months. Construction will begin immediately after the permits are received and the project is expected to be finished by early 2016, he said.
The project, which is being called 10th Street Apartments on city documents, will be built on the block where College and Brevard streets intersect 11th Street, and will include a 1,400-space public parking deck that’s part of a much bigger mixed-use development that Levine Properties has been planning with the city and Mecklenburg County for years.
Levine has submitted engineering documents to the city, the city development services website shows. City engineering is one of the preliminary steps to starting a development and must be approved before Mecklenburg County can issue building permits for a project.
According to Mecklenburg County property records, a company called Ninth Street Investors LLC owns about 6 acres – across three parcels – in the same area the apartments are planned. A quick search on the N.C. Secretary of State’s website showed that Ninth Street Investors is a company owned by Daniel Levine, who owns Levine Properties.
Nicholson said the apartment community won’t be a part of the planned $700 million urban village in First Ward, but said it will be in the same area.
Levine announced in September 2012 that the company was launching the ambitious, 15-year public-private project to transform nine blocks – or 30 acres, 23 of which belong to him and his family – of First Ward, which is now largely a landscape of surface parking lots. Plans call for the urban village to include a park, 1,500 apartments, 1.5 million square feet of offices, 350 hotel rooms, 350,000 square feet of retail, three parking decks and a new set of streets and sidewalks.
When the plans were announced, Levine said he hoped to start construction on the first phase – the county park, roadwork paid for almost entirely by the city of Charlotte, two parking decks and 200 apartments –in December 2012 or January 2013. After those months came and went, Levine said last year that work was being held up by government red tape.
W. Lee Jones, capital planning division director for the Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation Department, said the county is meeting with Levine on Thursday to discuss the parks portion of the redevelopment, which may mean that the urban village is getting closer to a start date.

Charlotte Area Foreclosures Continue to Shrink...

As reported By: Graziella Steele  of the Meck Times on April 29, 2014

 

  Charlotte’s foreclosure inventory continued its decline in March, accounting for 1.2 percent of all Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia homes, according to CoreLogic. In February, CoreLogic reported that Charlotte homes in the foreclosure process measured 1.28 percent of all homes with an outstanding loan.
The company said that for the 12 months ending in March 2014, there were 7,511 completed foreclosures in the metropolitan statistical area while in the year ending March 2013 there were 8,836 completed foreclosures.
Delinquencies as a percentage of all mortgages were also down for the month. Mortgages that were 90 days or more delinquent accounted for 4.3 percent of all outstanding loans in March, down from 4.38 percent in February.
For North Carolina as a whole, foreclosure inventory was 1.0 percent of all homes with a loan in March, a 0.9 percentage point decrease from a year ago. Four percent of homes were listed as seriously delinquent.
March’s foreclosure inventory was down 37 percent nationally from a year ago, CoreLogic reported. Completed foreclosures were down 10 percent from the year before, but up 5.9 percent from February.
While the foreclosure picture is improving, it is not yet within historical norms. Across the country, there were 48,000 completed foreclosures in March. Prior to the decline in the housing market, foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month between 2000 and 2006, according to CoreLogic.
“While getting healthier, the housing market is a long way from being fully recovered,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “By way of comparison, distressed stock inventories are more than three times higher than the levels of the early 2000s.”
“Most states have made good progress clearing their foreclosure inventories, but states that have a longer judicial foreclosure process, such as Florida, New Jersey and New York, continue to struggle with elevated distressed stock inventories,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic.
Other findings from the report:
*Year-over-year declines in foreclosures reached more than 30 percent in 37 states including in Arizona, California and Utah, where decreases were more than 50 percent.
*The four states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in March 2014 were Florida with 122,000, Michigan with 49,000, Texas with 39,000 and California with 334,000.
*The four states with the highest rate of houses in the foreclosure process were New Jersey at 6.0 percent, Florida at 5.8 percent, New York at 4.6 percent and Maine at 3.2 percent.

Know when to say no to real estate commission discussion

Realtor Notebook

By Teresa Boardman, Thursday, November 3, 2011.

Inman News™

When I was taking classes to get my real estate license, I was reminded over and over again that it is against the law for real estate licensees to discuss commissions with competitors. We were told that discussing commissions with our competitors could be a violation of the Sherman Antitrust act, and brokers used to be afraid -- paranoid, even.

The idea behind the law was to foster competition in the marketplace. If all of the brokerages got together and decided what to charge and then charged that amount to consumers, there would be restricted competition -- we could, as a group, work to block others from introducing lower-cost business models. The Department of Justice has had the National Association of Realtors in its sights for years.

As a licensed real estate broker, I should not write an article here or anywhere suggesting that all agents should charge "X" amount because we are worth it, or for any other reason.

I can advertise my own rates, but I should not engage in a conversation about the commission rate real estate professionals should charge with another licensee outside of my brokerage.

Someone without a real estate license can write anything about what real estate professionals should charge for services, but as a licensee I will not comment on such articles.

If I choose to comment and another real estate licensee comments, too, and we both agree that we are worth "X" percent -- and that happens to be the exact rate we charge for our services -- we may draw the attention of lawyers or antitrust law regulators.

Yesterday I was on the Trulia website in the Trulia Voices section, where consumers can ask questions and real estate professionals can answer. A seller asked what the average real estate commission rate is for the area.

Several agents stepped up to the plate and answered the question. The correct response from a licensee should be that we can provide only our own rates and that we don't know anything about averages.

One way for consumers to get an average would be if someone were to survey home sellers and ask them what they paid in total commissions. Consumers often ask us for averages -- they want the information. Another option is to view publicly available financial reports by real estate companies (examples: Realogy Corp. and ZipRealty).

Some of the state Department of Commerce sites handle the issue by stating that real estate commissions are negotiable, and they encourage consumers to negotiate.

The best place to get more information on the basics of the law and how it applies to Realtors is by contacting your local or state Realtor association. There is some information on the NAR website (Realtor.org), but most of it costs money. I found a free quiz on the site that addresses some of the basic issues.

Real estate licensees should not discuss commission rates with each other, and I think we sometimes forget that we can run into trouble by having online discussions about commission rates -- that includes comments on articles or blog posts and consumer websites.

I have occasionally written about commissions on my real estate blog, but I have disabled the ability to comment on the post because real estate agents will leave comments.

One could argue that if my readers are in New York or California, they are not my competitors, so it's OK to discuss with one another how much we charge.

But it could also be argued that an agent in Minnesota could be part of a nationwide real estate price-fixing scheme.

There are several other ways to run afoul of antitrust laws. We could all agree not to show the listings of company "X" because we don't like that company or how it runs its business.

I am not a lawyer. I just want to say that real estate licensees need to take care not to discuss commission practices with each other -- not even in the comments on a website or in answering a question on a website for consumers.

It seems like the real estate industry has gotten lax, as I can easily find agents' discussions about commission practices on websites. We all need to be reminded that we should not discuss commissions amongst ourselves -- even if the conversation was started by a consumer on a website.

We can publish our own rates, and advertise them as much as we want to, but we just should not discuss them with other brokers.

Helen Adams in the News!

Posted By Helen Adams Realty on November 2nd, 2011

In Charlotte Homes,Charlotte Market Data,Charlotte Real Estate,Uncategorized,Videos

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Helen Adams Realty and their very own Lauren Ponder (LP) were featured in a story on News 14 called “Charlotte Mecklenburg housing market shows signs of healing”.  To view a video of the report, please click here or click the screen shot below.

LP on News 14

The Story:
CHARLOTTE — The Charlotte and Mecklenburg County housing market is healing. That’s what National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said during a conference Tuesday morning.
Yun says sales have increased for two straight years and inventory is falling. He says that’s a good indicator that the housing market is finding an equilibrium.
“By this time next year, provided there is a continuing job addition in the economy, the housing market is set to return to healthy status,” said Yun.
Dr. Yun says that improvement could be derailed if two things happen.
First, he says new home construction needs to improve. He says current building is at a stand still because banks aren’t lending to builders. He says the new home inventory is at a 40 year low. He says the lack of inventory could cause a housing shortage and prices to spike.
Second, Yun says Washington lawmakers are considering a proposal to raise required down payments for some home buyers to 20 percent. He says the proposal is intended to avoid another housing bubble. Yun says the legislation could stall or damage the housing market.

$500 Gift Card

$500 Gift Card to Buyer’s Choice Piedmont Row Restaurant with Sale!

Posted By Helen Adams Realty on October 12th, 2011

In Charlotte Homes,New Home Listings,New Listings in Charlotte,SouthPark Area

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Cara Brillhart-Shields has just announced a unique offer for one of  her properties!  If you buy the property, not only do you get a new home, but you will also receive a $500 gift card to the Piedmont Row restaurant of your choice!  Possible options include
Taco Mac, Del Frisco, Brio, George’s or Terrace Café

Piedmont Row

This property is a spacious condo with a large kitchen – granite, stainless appliances, pendant lighting, tall cabinets, modern fixtures & hardwood floors.  It features a tile bath with glass enclosed shower.  It also includes an oversized walk-in Master closet, private balcony overlooking the heart of Piedmont Row, rooftop Pool & Club Room in building -Walk to restaurants & shopping