What’s Selling in Asheville?
May 8, 2008
I’m sure that many of you outside investors, local builders, and real estate agents (that are looking for a place to make money), are wondering about what’s selling in Asheville. Let’s take a look at today’s hot sheet on the regional MLS.
New listings= 148
Expired listings= 60
Pending listings= 55
Sold= 46
Price Change= 146
It doesn’t take an economics professor nor a mathematician to decipher this data. Unfortunately, this info with more expired listings than sales is becoming a common problem. Take note that the price changes clocked in at 146 today. Oh yeah, price reductions. Well that’s where we are headed (for those of us that understand how to sell real estate). The funny thing about Asheville over the last year’s real estate “crisis” is that even as the number of units sold decreases, the prices have held strong. Don’t get me wrong, I switched from Business School my second year at Auburn but it still looks like the law of supply and demand has left the building.
The good news is that we still have a market here in Asheville. We have enjoyed steady growth as opposed to major spikes followed by heavy declines. Over the last couple of years the builders have been working heavily in the 400k-600k market. Now they are looking into the “affordable housing” realm as the latter has become stagnant. Of the 46 that were posted today as “sold” (which means closed), 36 were under the 300k mark. Most of the builders that I work with are looking to switch gears and take advantage of this market. My concern is that, it too, will become flooded. From a local economic and developmental impact standpoint, that’s ok with me. Asheville HAS become a destination and resort area. We need to make sure that we are not finding ourselves in the same boat with many other resort areas that have nearly abolished affordable housing. The bottom line is that the rich need the poor to keep the services flowing and the poor need a place to live too. It’s when we lose that sector of our housing market that we lose our economic growth.
So go ahead, build cheap, just be ready to sell 10 homes to make the same amount of $$ that you were making on 1 million dollar deal. I’ll be ready to sell them for you.
Later beas24@charter.net
