Retrospective View of Early 2011 Beaufort MLS Statistics

Folks, this is a blog I wrote a while back and forgot to post.  I figured I would go ahead and post it in case someone was interested in a respective view of the first half of 2011.  Here we go...

We are five months into the 2011 real estate year, and there are some encourage signs, although I would be cautious before making any plans to do any house flipping just yet.

Real estate professionals and market observers have long maintained that the heavy inventory of foreclosure homes and short sales needs to be thinned before a recovery can begin.

And there is some encouraging news regarding the Beaufort market in the statistics through May 31.

There have been 421 home sales recorded through the Beaufort MLS. The median sales price is $175,000, which was also the median sales price through the same time period in 2011. And while the median sales figure is identical from 2010 to 2011, $175,000 allows buyers to buy about 8.5 % more home this year.

The median square footage for homes sold thus far in 2011 is 1752 square feet, about 8.5 percent more than that 1612 median square footage from 2010. This means that buyers -- at least the median buyer -- is paying $96 per square foot for a Beaufort area home, down about 10 percent from the $107 cost per square foot through the first five months of 2010.

Opportunities are definitely out there. My previous three closings have involved foreclosures in some of the most sought-after locations in Beaufort – Mossy Oaks, Lady’s Island, and Shell Point. All of these homes sold for less than $125,000.

No doubt, the opportunities are there for the taking.  According to the Beaufort Multiple Listing Service, 155 of the 421 referenced home sales were bank-owned foreclosures or short sales, a sales scenario in which the homeowner has maintained ownership of the property, but needs permission from the bank in order to sell the property for less than is owed.

This changing Beaufort market has dramatically changed the way people purchase their homes. A few years, conventional financing was king, and 80-plus percent of homes were purchased utilizing this method of financing. But, this year, less than half (about 47 percent) of homes were purchased using conventional loans. Cash purchases, however, have increased in recent years from a tiny percentage of transactions, to more than a quarter in 2011.