Real Estate

Here’s the good news — and the bad — in the latest Beaufort County housing report

By Alec Snyder

November 14, 2018 05:33 PM

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While more Beaufort County homes are for sale, fewer of them are selling.

Those are the findings of a new monthly report from The Beaufort County Association of Realtors (BCAR), which was released Wednesday. The report, which compared the local housing market of October 2017 to October 2018, found that home listings and inventory increased by 14.7 and 24.6 percent, respectively. But pending sales dipped by 10.1 percent.

Specifically, in October of this year, there were 297 new listings, 152 pending sales and 1,156 total units for sale.

Janet Gresham, CEO of the Beaufort County Association of Realtors, said in an email that units means “single-family, condos, duplexes, townhouses or mobile homes.” Of those 1,156 units for sale, 956 were single-family homes and 173 were condos.

Other key findings from the report:

  • The median sales price for homes improved to $236,495 throughout Beaufort County, which is 8.5 percent higher than the median this time a year ago.
  • The time houses spent on the market before sale decreased by 3.7 percent to 79 days.
  • Confidence remains high among homebuilders, which recent Bluffton permit approvals would indicate. The town gave 46 new homes the go-ahead for construction in September. In nearby Hardeeville, the Latitude Margaritaville community plans to welcome its first homeowners sometime in November.

In spite of a somewhat stagnant sales market, the BCAR points to the consistently low national unemployment rate as a good sign. The release said that the rate being so low — less than 4 percent in five of the last six months, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures — usually bodes well for the housing market.

Alec Snyder

Alec Snyder has been the growth and development reporter at The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette since June 2018. He covers Beaufort County and Bluffton government, along with housing affordability throughout the area. Alec is from Philadelphia and an alum of The George Washington University.

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