Stan Suther's Real Estate and Stuff

The most recent Standard & Poors/Case Shiller home pricing report shows that prices of Charlotte area homes are down 10% over April of 2008 (see the Charlotte Observer article HERE).  Our area was one of the last to be affected by the downturn, and since some of the hardest hit areas are starting to improve a bit, we may be one of the last to show some solid improvements in prices and sales volume. 

Still, as I’ve said before, you’ve got to be very careful in how statistics are put together and what conclusions you can draw from them.  I saw a comment in a real estate forum about this the other day that said you may see statistics on home prices in some areas increase because more high priced homes are being sold after going through foreclosure!  Mathematically that makes sense, but at a gut level, it seems strange- if more high priced houses are sold, although at lower than previous market prices, then that will take the average up.

The lesson in all of this is that if you have a house on the market, you’ve got to recognize what’s going on in your market and price accordingly.  If not, you’ll just get the results most sellers are getting- few showings and fewer offers.  I ran a search on one of our systems that shows the number of showings of houses on the market by price range and location.  Houses in Iredell County and around Lake Norman in the $150,000 to $250,000 price range have had an average of 8 total showings since January 1, 2009.  Looking at other price ranges, the number of showings gets somewhat lower as the price range goes up.  What this means is that if you want more showings than average and the resulting greater likelihood of an offer, you’d better be priced lower than average.  I know that hurts, but remember that if you are going to be buying another house in the same market, the sellers will be facing the same price pressure as you have, and you’ll likely get an agreement at a lower price than previous market, also.

If you’d like for me to run a showing stats report for you with different price ranges and areas, let me know.