Here in Western North Carolina, businesses are slowly reopening from the COVID-19 shutdown. Throughout this time, we’re keeping a close eye on data and providing our real estate market analysis to show what changes are occurring and where the market is going.
As always, our team at Asheville Cash Buyers aims to help you take the best possible next step in your property journey, so contact us if we can help in any way.
For our market update today, we’ll compare April 2020 numbers to March 2020 for the Western North Carolina area. The areas we look at are Asheville, Buncombe County excluding Asheville, Hendersonville, Henderson County excluding Hendersonville, and Haywood County.
We’re looking at the number of active listings, number of closed listings, median DOM (days on market), number of expired listings, closed price to original list price ratio, and the number of properties under contract.
Market Data: April & March, 2020
Active Listings: Looking at these numbers in our real estate market analysis, we see almost the same active listing count for all areas in March and April. There was a small drop in Haywood County and Hendersonville and a small increase in Buncombe, Asheville, and Hendersonville County.
Closed Listings: These are property transactions that are completed. There was a pretty significant drop off on closed listings in Buncombe County, Asheville, and Henderson County. Hendersonville increased slightly and Haywood County stayed about the same from March to April. In general, more homes closed in March. In our opinion, this was due to sustained momentum from the beginning of the year. In April, the change was probably due to residents in full stay-at-home mode.
Number under contract: This number shows properties where buyers and sellers have agreed upon terms but haven’t gotten to the closing table yet. As you can see from our market analysis, this was a little erratic for all areas. One area that stayed strong from March to April was the city of Asheville, which rose in April. Every other location had less, especially in Henderson County.
Median DOM: With this data, we see how long properties are staying on the market before they sell. This was a little surprising! There was a drop in days on market for Buncombe County, the city of Asheville, Henderson County, and Haywood County. Properties either sold more quickly or went off the market quickly. This is perhaps due to pricing – sellers and agents may be pricing homes more aggressively to attract buyers. So, is it becoming less of a sellers’ market? We’ll see in May.
Closed Price to List Price Ratio: Here, we examine how close the closing price of the home was to the original list price. We believe this is why the median DOM is lower – sellers are setting pricing more appropriately so properties go under contract quickly. Since this number rose slightly in all areas except Hendersonville, this is probably due to buyers liking the list price and making offers close to that without a lot of price adjustment. This is important to note if you are thinking of selling your house – pricing is very important. Our market analysis shows that buyers and sellers are aligning well on what they think the property should sell for.
Expired listings: It’s hard to know why these numbers are this way – we anticipated a higher number of expired listings in April, but that’s not the case. These numbers went down across the board. Do you have any guesses as to why that happened?
Please reach out with questions or insight on our market analysis. We always look forward to connecting and discussing the real estate market with anyone interested.