Sellers: You must strike while the iron is hot, and that time is now.
According to the September year-over-year numbers, our Myrtle Beach real estate market is setting records left and right.
Single-family resale home sales rose 31.6% from 500 to 685. The median price for single-family resale homes jumped 12% to $270,000, while the average sale price spiked 17% to $347,669. The most shocking number, though, is the inventory level—there are 50% fewer homes on the market now than there were at this time last year. Officially, we’re at 2.6 months of inventory, which is the lowest I’ve seen since we started tracking the MLS numbers.
If you remember, anything below six months of inventory constitutes a seller’s market, and a healthy market generally has four to six months of inventory. Our 2.6 months of inventory puts us in a massive seller’s market, and we’re actually in what we call an ‘inventory crisis.’ We have way more buyers entering the market than homes available for sale. Part of this is due to the increase in sales, but COVID-19 has also played a hand in this development. Thankfully, with the safety protocols we’ve implemented, my team and I have had zero issues helping sellers sell.
If there’s a number that can really help us forecast what will happen moving forward, it’s showings per listing, which rose 63% year over year. In other words, listings are getting about 63% more visitors than they did last year.
As you know, we always try to gauge what’s happening in real time on my weekly WRNN radio show by tracking how many properties go under contract on a weekly basis. In the week prior to the recording of this video, there were 801 of these properties. During the week I recorded this video, that number dropped to 674.
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We have way more buyers entering the market than homes available for sale.
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If you’re thinking of selling, you want to strike while the iron is hot. I don’t know what’s going to happen after the election, or how the COVID-19 pandemic will play out, or where interest rates will be next year. Interest rates, in particular, are what’s driving our market. As of the recording of this video, they were hovering around 3.02%. Before that, they were sitting at 2.98%.
Right now, we’re seeing a perfect storm for our market. A surplus of buyers from the Northeast are resettling here in Myrtle Beach, primarily because they’re frustrated with government. With all the restrictions in place, they’re taking an early retirement, and we’ve been selling a lot of properties virtually to these buyers.
What about the condo market? Condo sales were huge last month, rising 20% from 449 to 539 sales. The median price, meanwhile rose 14.8% to $155,000, and the average sale price rose 22% to $197,469. The condo market is seeing the same challenge as the resale market in terms of supply—inventory dropped 16.2% to just 4.2 months. The number of showings per listing rose 38.9%. Again, this means a tremendous number of buyers are looking for condos, and the biggest obstacle is simply finding properties for them. We have 58,000+ buyers on our website, and the reality is that we don’t have that many homes for sale.
If you’ve been thinking about selling or had your home on the market in the past but failed to sell, give me a call or send an email so I can help you take advantage of this opportunity. Many sellers are selling for way more money than they thought they could, and they have far more equity in their homes than previously thought. The market is moving quickly, and you need an agent on your side who sells a lot of properties. The average agent sells just four homes per year, and that’s not going to cut it in this fast-paced market.
As always, if you have any other real estate needs, feel free to reach out to me as well. I look forward to speaking with you soon!
