Now lets talk about Brunswick County’s Residential Stats: 10% LESS new listings in August 22 than in August 21.
Almost the same amount of units sold in August 22 than August 21.
Avg SP and Median SP up slightly over August 21.
Almost the same total sales $ in Aug 22 and Aug 21.
That sure doesn’t look, sound, or smell like a “recession” or “slow down” or “bubble”. Have you really thought about what the definition of a “housing recession”? That term is being tossed around by everyone – fun fact, there is no definition of “housing recession”. Inman recently did a deep dive into this and asked leading economists this question. They all agree that this is a newly made-up term that is the latest buzzword with no rigid parameters. This was even confirmed by Google – check out the graph below that shows the last 5 years of this term:
The economists were also unified in urging caution when using this terminology, noting it would be easy for people to misconstrue what is actually going on because they might have a preconceived idea of what a recession is in general. For example, 2008 all over again. Simply, negative connotations, or that something is fundamentally wrong. Nothing seems really wrong in Brunswick County other than a slight slowdown!
There are only 999 Active listings (Pending with showings not included) – that is NOT a whole lot. The last time we had this many listings was January 2021. Remember, everyone was saying there was no inventory in January of 2021! Sales have been pretty much steady month over month for the past 2 years – we hover between 500-600 sales a month, with our dip in December, January, and February. YTD we are running slightly behind last year’s unit sales pace at -17.6%, but because of our increase in average selling price, we are only -3.1% behind last year's total $.
We are at $1.7BIL in sales! We are maybe one month, likely 2 months away from hitting $2BIL again. That was unheard of prior to 2020! In August, 4 homes sold for $2MIL+ and another 19 sold for $1MIL+. Of the 511 homes sold, 130 still sold for above list price, and 182 sold for list price. More than half the homes sold in August sold for at or above the list price! Here is a fun fact: price decreases hit a high in June (the average price decrease was 6% less than list) – in August, there were significantly fewer price decreases, with the average being 2%.
