This week our listings saw an average of 1.57 showings each. The market hasn’t shown many signs of improvement. Although, there does seem to be a few positive economic signals including a slight drop in gas prices in the past week. Phew! Lets hope that continues.
As showing traffic continues at slow pace, I developed a more detailed analysis of the Mecklenburg county sales statistics in search of a pattern. What I revealed is that the more pricey the real estate, the slower the sales.
Consider the graph below showing the percentage of sales per price range for June 2008. Remember that there were a total of 973 home sales in Mecklenburg county that month.
This graph shows that in June, three quarters of all home sales in Mecklenburg county were under $300,000 and 85% were less than $400,000. This tells us that the market for first time buyers is keeping a steady pace. The first time buyers may not be able to command an out of the ordinary deal in negotiations as that price point is still selling. What’s most interesting about the data is that almost half of all June home sales were between $100K-$200K.
Clearly buyers looking for homes over $300,000 are in a very good position to land a steal right now. Many of the would-be buyers in this market have homes they’ve been unable to sell elsewhere, which leaves only a few that are able. The few that are out there have found themselves in the very envious position of having strong negotiating power on their side. These buyers most certainly have the upper hand and sellers absolutely must recognize this when pricing a home.