Although
Charleston SC real estate is performing better than most cities around the country, the good news is that foreclosures are on the decline. If you have been sitting on the side lines and are waiting for that
great deal then you have missed the boat. If you read my post below from last year you’ll see where distressed sales were on the decline then, and now they are down even more. Trying to pick up a deal on a house now is gone. Prices have risen dramatically in last 6 months and the time to strike is long gone.In June, 60,000 homes turned into completed foreclosures compared to 80,000 foreclosures a year ago,
CoreLogic reported Tuesday (08/2012).
The analytics company stated the yearly drop puts completed foreclosures at 2007 levels. Month-over-month, there was no reported change in completed foreclosures for June. Since September 2008, 3.7 million homes have been lost to foreclosure.“The decline in the flow of completed foreclosures to pre-financial crisis levels is more welcome news pointing to an emerging housing market recovery,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “However, we believe even more can be done to reduce the inventory of foreclosures by decreasing the level of regulatory uncertainty and expanding alternatives to foreclosure.”
The number of homes in national foreclosure inventory in June stood at 1.4 million, or 3.4 percent of all homes with a mortgage. June’s figure is a slight drop from a year ago when the total was 1.5 million, or 3.5 percent. From May, the figure was unchanged. CoreLogic defines foreclosure inventory as the share of all mortgaged homes in some stage of the foreclosure process.“While completed foreclosures and real-estate owned (REO) sales virtually offset each other over the past four months, producing static levels of foreclosure inventory for most of this year, they are beginning to diverge again,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “Over the last two months REO sales declined while completed foreclosures leveled out. So we could see foreclosure inventory rising going forward.”The states that saw the highest number of completed foreclosures over a one-year period since June 2012 were California, leading with 125,000, followed by Florida (91,000), Michigan (58,000), Texas (56,000) and Georgia (55,000).The top five states accounted for 48.4 percent of all completed foreclosures nationally.Florida (11.5 percent) led as the state with the highest share of inventory in foreclosure, with New Jersey (6.5 percent), New York (5.1 percent), Illinois (5.0 percent), and Nevada (4.8 percent) taking the next four spots.Meanwhile Charleston SC has one of the lowest foreclosure rates in the United States.James Schiller –
Charleston SC Real Estate Agent (article by: Ester Cho of DS News)
The inventory of homes for sale continued to shrink, down to a 4.4 month supply in December based on the month’s sales pace. That’s down from 4.8 months in November and is the lowest level since May 2005. Realtors consider a 6-month supply to be a balanced market between buyers and sellers. Homes are selling faster than a year ago. According to NAR, 31% of all homes sold in December were on the market less than a month. The median time on the market for all homes was 73 days last month compared with 99 days in December 2011. Single-family home sales slipped 1.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.35 million in December from 4.41 million in November, but are 11.5% above the December 2011 pace, NAR says. The nation’s median existing single-family home price was $180,300 in December, up 11.5% from a year ago whereas, here in the Charleston SC market home prices are up 4.4% to over $190,000. Median prices are affected by the mix of homes sold and can go up or down depending on whether higher-priced homes make up more of the market.Distressed homes — foreclosures and short sales — accounted for 24% of December’s sales, down from 32% in December 2011. Foreclosures sold for an average discount of 17% below market value while short sales went for 16% under market value. Short sales are homes that are sold for less than their unpaid mortgage amount. Market researcher CoreLogic, whose data includes repeat sales of like homes, says home prices in November were up 7.4% year over year.A shrunken inventory of homes for sale in Charleston, SC— and less distressed properties on the market — have helped lift prices. Improving job growth, low interest rates and rising prices are convincing more people that the market has bottomed and that it’s time to buy. While new home construction is still far from healthy levels, home builders started work on homes in December at the fastest pace since the summer of 2008, the Commerce Department said last week.Home builder sentiment in January remained at a six-year high but didn’t move higher as it had in previous months, the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index also showed last week. CoreLogic expects national home prices to rise 6% this year, on top of a 7.5% increase last year. Yet the tight supply of homes for sale is a big concern in many markets where rapidly shrinking inventories are leading to multiple offers and higher prices. 
Nationally, the number of homes sold rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.47 million. The numbers missed economists’ expectations of about 4.52 million home sales, according to Drew Matus, an economist at investment bank UBS.“Mortgage interest rates have been at record lows this year while rents have been rising at faster rates,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement. “Combined, these factors are helping to unleash a pent-up demand. However, the market is constrained by unnecessarily tight lending standards and shrinking inventory supplies, so housing could easily be much stronger without these abnormal frictions.”Independent economists are looking for the housing market to begin slowly reversing its more than 30% slide in prices, though most do not expect substantive price gains until at least 2013 or 2014.“It was a little below expectations but still good,” said Mike Zoller, an economist at Moody’s Analytics. He said the sharp gains in prices reflect the smaller percentage of foreclosure-related distress sales included in the numbers, as well as the shift to more higher-end home sales.
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