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Our featured image this month tells you everything you need to know about the current market for Charlotte, NC homes — well, almost everything.
On one hand, May’s numbers for the greater Charlotte region tell us what we’ve known for some time, that we’re in a lopsided seller’s market. For example, the median sales price has increased once again, this time by $14,000, or 5.7% compared to the same time last year. And the inventory of homes for sale, the primary driver of home prices, shrank once again, catching buyers between the hammer of rising demand and the anvil of inadequate supply. The current inventory dropped by 1,063 units, a decrease of 10.1%. This left the number of months supply of homes for sale at only 2.3, a drop of 11.5% from last May.
Our image asks if we have any questions, and we do. The one question we could ask about the Charlotte real estate market is whether sellers are becoming more flexible, and the answer is a qualified “Yes.” This month, the percentage of original list price received has dipped by .2%. No, that’s not a big change in a metric that’s trended against home buyers for the past several months, but it is a slight brightening in a ray of hope we’ve seen for the past four months.
Yes, it’s a tiny ray. With unemployment low and projected economic growth very favorable, home buyers have the means to pay for homes. The number of pending sales grew by 17.3% this month, underscoring continued demand. Sellers and their agents know this, and will negotiate for that top dollar.
Still, with the number of new listings up by 2.8%, we’re seeing a slight improvement on the supply side of the equation. So while that little ray of hope may be small, it’s real.
These are the overall numbers for the greater Charlotte Metro area. For more detail, see the reports for Charlotte, Matthews, and Huntersville.
