Home sales along the SC coast soar compared to last January

Sales rose 15 percent in January, compared to the same month a year earlier, according to a report Tuesday from the S.C. Realtors trade group.

Sales soared in the Hilton Head Island area, which includes seven counties, from only 83 in January 2009 to 169 sales in January 2010. Sales rose 50 percent in the Myrtle Beach area.

But sales cooled in the Columbia market, dropping 3.7 percent in January, compared to a year earlier after four straight months of gains. The Greenwood and Sumter areas also saw declines.

Median price statewide was $140,000, up 7.2 percent from last January.

Nationwide, home prices also climbed in December, according to Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index. Prices rose 0.3 percent from November to December, the seventh-straight monthly gain.

Buyers rushed to take advantage of tax credits for homebuyers, which has been extended until the end of April to get a home under contract.

But real estate experts do not expect hefty increases in home sales because many of the buyers who were on the fence bought homes as the first deadline approached.

"Everybody thought it was going to end (in November) so a lot of those people went ahead and took the plunge," Columbia real estate agent Jay Graham said. "How many are left over to buy during the second batch? It probably won't be as much."

In the long-run, the tax credit could cause a longer recovery, Graham said, because people who would have waited until this year bought homes in 2009.

"Our real test is going to come at the end of April," he said.

A recovery will depend on interest rates staying under 6 percent and an improvement in South Carolina's unemployment rate, which is the fifth-highest in the nation, said Larry Crossett, owner of MaxM RealtyCQ.

"We still hear every day of folks losing their jobs," he said. "They're not going to buy a house if they don't have a job."