Real Estate News - Myrtle Beach
Foreclosures Drive Upswing in Home Sales
By Graeme Moore, WPDE
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 6:09 p.m.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 6:09 p.m.
The continuing foreclosure crisis has created a buyers market, and it is playing a large role in the recent upswing in home sales, market analysts say.
Sellers whose homes aren't in foreclosure are competing with low prices on the bank-owned properties.
"Buyers are able to get really good deals right now, and that's why we're seeing our sales increase," said Tom Maeser, a real estate analyst and director of continuing education at Horry Georgetown Tech.
Maeser said in January 2010, residential home sales on the Grand Strand hit 207. That's a 15 percent increase from January 2009 when 180 homes sold.
But as sales edge upward, prices are dropping. The average price for a residential home in January 2009 was $233,716, but this past January, it fell ten percent to $211,293, Maeser said.
Just as re-sale home prices drop, so do prices on new construction.
"We're almost able to compete with the foreclosure market, but not yet," said builder Bryan Slattery whose got five new home projects under contract since the beginning of the year.
One of those homes is a 3,500-square foot residential structure in Plantation Lakes. In 2005, it could have sold for $650,000 - $700,000, but now it will sell for $350,000 - $400,000, Slattery said.
Still, Slattery says any business is better than last year when he built just three homes.
"They're not great numbers for everybody but ... it's slow growth. There's not as much negativity as there was last year, that's for sure."
Foreclosures, meanwhile, continue to create some negativity, as the trend is now toward primary homes foreclosing, and not the second homes seen at the beginning of the recession.
"It's not slowing down at all," said Anne Lawson who works in Horry County's Master-in-Equity court. "We're foreclosing on real homes that people live in."
Lawson's office processed 3,641 foreclosures in 2009, and 2,846 in 2008. Since January of this year, she's already taken 467 cases.
"It's never ending. There's no way you can catch up," she said in an interview Wednesday afternoon.
Home prices will continue to drop, the real estate analyst said, until the that market segment clears out, and that could take months, possibly years. While it makes for a great buyer's market, for sellers, it can be a nightmare.
"Prices going down make it hard on the sellers because they're having to take less ... many times less than where their mortgage is at," Maeser said.
