New Bern and area home sales

Currently, there are 1387 homes listed for sale in our MLS System. Of these 90 are listed as Bank Owned, and 48 are listed as Short Sales.

During the past year there were 1214 homes sold in our MLS.  This equates to a little over a year absorption rate, not good news if you are a seller. However each price range varies in days on the market before a sale takes place and list price to sells price ratios. If you happen to be in a good price range you could expect to sell in under 120 days. When a house is priced to sell, buyers and buyers agents realize this, and will often make an offer closer to the asking price.

Although the number of bank owned properties is about as high as I have seen it, it is relatively low compared to the market as a whole, about 6%. Interestingly enough, bank owned properties accounted for about 16% of sales in the last year. This probably indicates that banks will get aggressive on their sales price especially when they are not sold in a reasonable time frame.

Year to date home sales are about the same as last year volume wise. Total dollar volume is however down 3%. I am not sure, but believe, this is due to home prices still sliding south.

New Home Sales


There are 154 new homes listed for sale in our MLS. In the last 365 days  237 new homes sold. Of these new home sales, 107 were priced from $150,000-$200,000 This compares to 282 new home sales in the year prior and 330 the year before that. Why are sales down 50% from 2 years ago? I believe this is largely due to banks being very cautious about construction loan lending, more folks looking at renting instead of buying, and attractive existing home prices.

I have read some words of encouragement regarding some housing markets, especially those that were hit the hardest. However, I believe the market will improve when the economy starts to create jobs, and I am not real confident the current President knows how to do this.