Charlotte’s low inventory of homes for sale continued to drive rising residential list prices, while year-over-year sales numbers show a decline in June.
Median list prices rose to $248,045, an increase of 2.8 percent over June 2017, while on average sales prices rose 5.7 percent to $302,177 across the Charlotte MLS region. Sellers also are getting approximately 97.8 percent of list price, an increase of 0.3 percent since the year-ago period.
These numbers, as reported by the Charlotte Regional Realtor Association in its monthly report, show the impact of low inventory in Charlotte’s strong seller’s market.
While putting sellers at an advantage when it comes to naming their price, low inventory also hurts sales numbers as those same sellers are likely to also be buyers in a market struggling to meet housing demands.
Homes sales dropped almost 12 percent from year-ago figures to 4,724. In comparison to May 2018, however, home sales were up 4.1 percent from 4,530 homes sold.
Inventory numbers in June dropped 17.2 percent since June 2017, with only 9,554 homes for sale in the CarolinaMLS region. That equates to approximately 2.3 months of market inventory for the region. During the same period in 2017, the Charlotte region had 11,537 properties for sale, equating to 2.9 months of inventory.
“Even though the Charlotte region is wedged into a solid seller’s market, incredibly low supply coupled with higher prices and rising mortgage rates are presenting challenges to buyers,” according to CRRA and CarolinaMLS President Jason Gentry.
Buyers unable to meet rising asking prices in the metro area are expanding their home searches to outlying metro suburbs like the Lake Norman/Davidson area, Concord, Lincolnton and York County’s Fort Mill area in South Carolina, where year-over-year sales for June increased.
Closed sales figures for those outlying areas are as follows: Concord +2.1%, Davidson +20.8%, Fort Mill +13.9%, Lake Norman +2.7%, and Lincolnton +23.8%.
Within Mecklenburg County, the median and average sales price rose 4.2 percent ($268,000) and 6.3 percent ($340,085), respectively. Sellers received 98.4% percent of list price, a slight drop from the year-ago period. Market inventory in the county also dropped 14.3% percent to 1.8 months of inventory from 2.1 months in June 2017.
In the City of Charlotte, closed sales fell 17.4 percent to 1,543 from 1,868 in June 2016. Sellers are getting 98.6 percent of list price, an insignificant drop from the same period a year ago. Charlotte’s inventory is even lower, at 1.7 months, a drop of 10.5 percent.
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