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.