Wilmington NC real estate median sold price continues its five month climb; we are 1.0% ahead of last month and 1.6% over last year this time. Our pending index is up 6.3% from last month. Our year to date we have a growth of 15.2% sold units over last year while our average sold price is just 1.9% behind last year. In our rolling 12 months we are 16.1% up in sold units and our average sold price is only down by 3.6%. This is the first month to break the string of sold units over the prior year; we had a string of 10 months. A key point to note is the average sold price is just a hair under last month by .03% or $707.00, but we are 8.4% ahead of last year this time.  The trend is our negative numbers and gaps keep getting smaller and smaller.
In the month of July, we saw a decrease of 125 Wilmington NC homes for sale, we have 5,604 homes on the market as of August 1st.  This continues to put us in a strong buyer’s market with a listing inventory of over a 16.0 month supply. With the low sales in July this affects our month supply with a change of 5 months from last month. Our average list price has stayed below the $400,000 range for eleven months; we are currently at $377,052. In July we saw a decrease in our seller concessions, it is now 21.7%. Our average days on the market are 121. The list to sold ratio is 94.8% and is up .4% from last month; this number needs to continue to get better. The number of homes that sold in 15 days or less continues to remain very low, 17.7% of July sold homes. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 4.44% with an average 0.7 points for the week ending August 12, 2010. We are now hitting historic lows in mortgage rates.
Listing Inventory
In July we saw our first decrease in listing inventory of 125 units. We are about 204 units over August 1, 2009. We have 5,604 single family homes for sale in our MLS. The average list price of $377,052 is down by $3,515 from last month. The average list price has decreased by 8.1% from August 1, 2009.

Monthly Average Sold Price
Our monthly average sold price is down by .03% from last month and up 8.4% from July 2009. Our average sold price is down by $707.00 from last month. July average sold price ($237,467) shows an increase of 1.3% from year end 2009. Our average sold price is up by $18,501 over last July.

Monthly Sold Units
This is the first monthly decline in the number of homes sold in Wilmington, NC when compared to previous year. The number of sold homes is down 32.3% from last month and down 22.2% from July 2009. Last month we had 517 sold units and this month only 350 sold units, last year in July we had 450 sold units. Due to the First Time Home Buyer increase in sales, a lot of these sales were pushed up and people that might have been planning to buy in July moved up their purchase to coincide with the tax credit.

Average Sold Price Year to Date
Year over year our year to date numbers have dipped a little.
2003 year end average sale price $ 186,137
2004 year end average sale price $ 210,048
2005 year end average sale price $ 254,080
2006 year end average sale price $ 264,498
2007 year end average sale price $ 273,408
2008 year end average sale price $256,498
2009 year end average sale price $234,379
2010 year to date average sale price $227,930
While our current year to date numbers are lower than Year End 2009 they do show promising signs that our sales are on the upswing. The first seven months of 2010 has a 358 sold unit gain over first seven months of 2009. The average sales price is down 1.9% for the first seven months of 2010 than the first seven months of 2009. Our median sales price is just 1.7% behind 2009.

Rolling 12 months
Another bright spot is the rolling 12 month numbers. When we look at August 1st, 2009 to July 31th, 2010 we have 4,725 sold units and when we compare August 1st, 2008 to July 31th, 2009 we have a 684 unit gain (4,041 sold units). When we look at the same rolling 12 months for average sold price we see that we are only down by 3.6%. So the dates of 8/1/2009 to 7/31/2010 we have an average sold price of $231,630 while from 8/1/2008 to 7/31/2009 we had an average sold price $240,403.
Median Sold Price
Our Median sold price is up 1.6% from last month, about $189,950. While we have not dipped as low as the National Median we seem to have turned the corner while the national median is showing a slight increase. I would anticipate over the next couple of months to continue to see this median increase.

Pending
Pending Sales – A sale is listed as pending when the contract has been signed but the transaction has not yet closed. Sales are typically finalized within one to two months from signing. I look at the total pending units on a regular basis and this is how they chart out. We saw our peak pending numbers about May 3rd. We are actually up 6.3% from last month and we are down just 12.5% from August 16, 2009. With the tax credit benefits expired it will be interesting to see if our sales can improve going into late summer and early fall.

Market Absorption rate – The number of homes sold in July, 350 divided by the current listing inventory, 5,604 gives us an 16.0 month supply of single family homes. This increased by 5.0 months from last month. We need to get this inventory back under 12 months. With rates where they are and plenty of inventory; we can get this number down.
List to Sold price ratio – the average list price of the sold properties is $250,624 and the average sold price is $237,467 for July which gives us a 94.8% list to sold price ratio – a increase of .4% from last month. We have now managed to stay under 95% for over a year.
Seller Concessions – We had 21.7% of sold properties report a sales concession for July, an decrease of 8.7%. We want this number to go lower.
Days on Market – The average days on market for the sold properties is now at 121 for July. That is about 4 months to keep a property on the market. Only 17.7% of the properties were placed under contract in less than 15 days for the month of July.
Carolina & Kure Beach
There are currently 499 single family homes for sale at Carolina and Kure Beaches and this represents an 17 unit decrease over July 1, 2010 and 8.9% of our total WRAR inventory. The average list price is $424,999 an increase of about $6,474 from July. In July there were 42 homes sold, divide that by the homes available and you have a 11.8 monthly supply of homes in Carolina and Kure Beach – this is by far our best monthly supply level in a long time. The average sold price for the month of July was $272,612 and is down $83,634 from last month. When we look at our rolling 12 months August 1, 2009 to July 31, 2010 we have 317 homes sold at an average price of $289,532. While August 1, 2008 to July 31, 2009 we had 242 homes sold at an average price of $322,450.
This data was pulled on August 14, 2010, based on information from the Wilmington Regional Association of REALTORS Incorporated, for the period Jan. 1, 2005 through July 31, 2010.

Compliments of David Flory NMLS #91592

Mortgage Consultant
Cunningham & Company Mortgage Bankers
910-352-8273 cell
910-313-0045 office
davidf@cunninghammortgage.com
www.cunninghammortgage.com