The Strawn Report
Real Estate Rebound in Beaufort, SC?
By Keith Strawn
ExploreBeaufortRealEstate.com
It was a good way to end the real estate year.
Beaufort, SC home sellers enjoyed a surge in the final quarter of 2009, as the Beaufort real estate market posted its best quarter since 2006. The strong finish gave needed momentum going into 2010, as sellers and Realtors finished off what had been a disappointing year, according to Beaufort Multiple Listing Service (MLS) stats.
There were 214 home sales logged between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, the same number of home transactions as 2006, according to MLS stats.
Within these quarterly figures were other signs of encouragement. 2009 posted the best November (75 units) and December (73 units) sales figures since 2005, the last year in Beaufort which saw a combination of both rising prices and robust unit figures.
Perhaps driving these figures were a continuation of price depreciation, a result of increasing numbers of short sales and foreclosures. The medial sales price in 2009 was $185,000, versus $226,800 in 2006, the first year of Beaufort's real estate slowdown.
Was 2009 the bottom of the market? Only time will tell, but 790 homes sold for the entire year was only about 1 percent (8 homes) off from the 798 sold in 2008.
Because of the change in the credit markets, the way Beaufort buyers have purchased homes has been turned on its head.
In 2006, Beaufort was very much a conventional loan market, with 83 percent of all home purchases done this way. By 2009, however, only 47 percent of purchases were made via conventional loans.
At the same time, there has been an extreme boost to the number of cash sales, VA loans, and FHA purchases.
Cash sales doubled between 2006 and 2009, jumping from 10 percent to 20 percent. VA loans quadrupled during this same time period, increasing from 5 percent in 2006, to 19 percent in 2009.
As banks have buckled down on lending policies, these other forms of finanincing have become very attractive to buyers.
FHA, a loan type which allows buyers to borrow as much as 97 percent of the loan amount, represented less than one half of one percent in 2006, but by the end of 2009 represented 8 percent of all loans. I can't even do the math on that increase.
**These figures are deemed accurate, but are always subject to errors and omissions.
