There were 348* closed properties in the nine residential zip codes in Greensboro. That’s up about 34% from June 2009 when there were 259 closed properties. (This is only slightly lower than June 2008, which had 388 closings, but down 19% from June 2007, when there were 428 properties closed….>meh<…)

This was the 5th straight month of improving numbers.

The average closed price is up as well, at $172,052 which is 5% higher than last June ($163,663).

The sales data by zip codes shows that almost all had year-over-year increase in sales. Only 27406 was flat. Two zips, 27401 and 27455 actually had more closings in June 2010 than in the previous two years.

The sales numbers for July will be a test, since the effects of the federal home buyer tax credit will have passed for the most part. But for now, let’s celebrate this hot, hot June.

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) as of June 29, 2010,  and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.

What does all this mean to buyers, sellers and to those interested in their own property values?

It means things are pretty cruddy for you if are trying to sell your house and things are pretty good for you if you’re looking to buy.

This has been the case for some time now. (I would like to compare inventory and prices for this week compared to the same time last year, but I was so demoralized after months of bad news in 2009 that I took I hiatus from stats for several weeks. Now my pity party is over and comparative data will be the name of the game from now on – no matter how gross.)

This is not to say nothing is moving Properties are selling. In the next day or so I’ll post about the June sales numbers, which were higher than May as well as higher than last June. A large part of that is undoubtedly due to the late, great federal home buyers tax credit. But, still.

The long and the short of it is, if you want to sell your house, clean it, de-clutter it, make it smell nice and price it properly.

That last thing is key. The whole issue with so much inventory is that, if you have a house to sell, there are that many more people who have one to sell at about the same size, location, school district, etc.,  You have to make your home the one that buyers can most easily see themselves purchasing and moving into with the fewest hassles.

Getting back to the numbers, the 27410 zip code continues to have the lion’s share of listings: 674.

27405, 27406 and 27406 are neck and neck and neck with 443, 446 and 445. (27405 & 27406 also have the greatest number and greatest percentage of foreclosures.

The average list price for the week, including all property types, is about $222K. What will spending about that amount buy you? Here’s an example. (Click on the photo for more information):

2209 W. Friendly Avenue, Greensboro, NC $214,900 (MLS#572063)

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) as of June 29, 2010,  and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.

I’ve added a metric to my weekly peak at the foreclosure listings: The percentage or overall listings are foreclosures.

For all the months and months I’ve been tracking weekly forclosure listings in the nine residential Greensboro zip codes, I’ve never looked this number.

Well, bad on me because that number may be as telling as any other about the state of the market here in town.

For the week ending June 20, 2010, there were 14 new foreclosure listings. There were 142 listings overall, meaning 9.9% are foreclosures. This got me to wondering about the historical trend for this measure in Greensboro.

As well as I can figure, pulling data from the MLS (from whence all my listing information has always come), 9.9% is fairly middling. Actually below the 12 week average of 11.8% of weekly listings. In those 12 weeks, the highest percentage was *gag* 17% and the lowest was 6.7%.

Looking back to the same 12 weeks last year and the streams begin to cross:

You can see that there were weeks last year when the percentage of foreclosures was quite a bit lower than now. But there was a moratorium on foreclosures for a spell back then. I was surprised to see, though, that the percentage of foreclosures on a weekly basis, other than the moratorium time, hasn’t changed appreciably since I started tracking way back in early September 2008.

That was the month things started feeling pretty weird, real estate-wise around here.

I would have thought that we would have seen a steady increase over all this time. Not so. Over these nearly two years of data, the average percentage of foreclosures listed has been 11.6%. Again, these are properties listed in the Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS). It doesn’t include properties sold on the courthouse steps or otherwise outside the MLS.

Still. It surprised me.

Oh well. Here are the rest of the numbers:

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.

Although 3300 properties is down from last week’s number of 3314 (and the previous week’s – 3304) the inventory number is still too high and the average list price is still off from where we were last year.

Some more details:

• The percentage of foreclosures overall is about 8%. This has been a fairly consistent number.
• The zip code with the highest number of listings is 27410. Again, nothing new there.
• The highest priced property is $3,500,000. The lowest is $12,000.
• Of the current listings, about 18% are ‘pending’.
• 85% are single-family
• 17% are townhouses
• 13% are condominiums

At this point what we will hope is that the inventory is leveling off. One the number of properties on the market being to decline, prices will at some point start to increase. The last couple of months have had good sales data. It remains to be seen how the next couple of months will treat the housing market in Greensboro. But whatever the news, you’ll be able to find it here.

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) as of June 29, 2010,  and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.

My cautious hopefulness last week about the teensiest indication of an improvement in Greensboro foreclosure listings was short-lived. Listings were back up to 18* this week and all zip codes except 27409 had at least one. And the 12-week rolling number shot back up as well, to 179 from 169.

The highest priced foreclosure for the week ending June 13th is $379,900 in the 27408 zip code. The lowest is $12,900in  27407.

Three zip codes continue to dominate the total listings over the last 12 weeks: 27405, 27406, 27407. Between them they account for 58% of the total foreclosures listed.

The rest of the data rolls out like so:

It’s obviously going to be a while before the backlog of foreclosures that are currently in the pipeline to work through the system before we see any appreciable improvement in these numbers.

Meh.

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.

Regular readers of this site know that my particular method of tracking all sorts of Greensboro real estate information is by zip code. Zip code profiles help drill down that information a bit further. This is the second such profile on this site. (My profile of 27410 can be found here. And, yes, it has been a minute since I did that profile. No sense in rushing these things;)  )

BTW, this is very broad information about local real estate, as reported in the Triad MLS. For a comprehensive look at demographics for this zip code, look here.

Today’s profile is of 27406.

First, the basics:

• 27406 is located in the southeast part of Greensboro, “southwest” being defined as south of Market Street and east of Elm Street.

• The average currently listed price of single family homes is $148,178, compared to that of all Greensboro zip codes, $249,784.

• 27406 is probably the largest zip area-wise and has the seconds most listings: 458 which represents 15% of the total listings in town at this time. 27410 is still king of the hill in that area with a whopping 622.

Current Listing Data (followed by same info for al zip codes combined)

• average active listing price (all property types): $146,510 ($223,107)

• single-family: 419 (91%), 2445 (74%)
• townhouses: 29 (6%), 482 (29%)
• condominium: 10 (2%), 357 (11%)

• foreclosure: 72 (16%) 264 (8%)

• highest list price (single-family): $899,000 ($4,900,00)
• lowest list price (single-family): $12,000 ($6,000)

12 Month Sales Data

Over the last 12 months, sales in the 27406 zip have looked like this:

• total number of closings (all property types): 418 (2,855)

• average closed priced (all types, last 12 months): $121,283 ($167,604)
• average list price (all property types): $146,510 ($160,356)
• average list/closed price percentage: 96% (96%)

• single-family: 295 (59%) 2,210 (77%)
• townhouse: 132 (27%) 386 (14%)
• condominium: 70 (14%) 245 (9%)

• foreclosure: 137 (33%) 565 (20%)

• highest closed price (single-family): $366,500 ($1,200,000)
• lowest closed price (single-family): $5,000 ($5,000)

Schools

Some of the schools children who live in 27406 attend are:

• Elementary: Alamance, Archer, Foust, Frazier, Gillespie Park, Lindley, Pleasant Garden, Sedalia, Southern, Sumner, Vandalia, Washington, Wiley
• Middle: Allen, Eastern, Hairston, Jackson, Kiser, Southeast, Southern
• High: Dudley, Eastern, Grimsley, Smith, Southeast, Southern

Some 27406 Listings

For your viewing pleasure….

3731 Williams Dairy Road (MLS# 570183) $239,900

5677 Old Randleman Rd (MLS# 565355) $279,500

1107 Glynis Lane (MLS# 576949)

331 Steeple Chase (MLS# 579043)

Keep an eye on this site for updates about this zip code and others.

As always, whether the news is good or bad, you’ll see it here.

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.

Unlike the price of apples, though, when a community has too much housing inventory, the impact can be widely felt. After all, properties whose value drops  will be taxed less. (You can read how property taxes are calculated in Guilford County here.) While lower taxes sounds great for the homeowner, lower tax revenues across a large area mean drastic changes for the entire community.

At any rate, tracking the housing inventory in Greensboro shows what everyone probably knows: There’s a great many properties for sale. As of June 5th, per our local Multiple Listing System (the database all properties listed by area Realtors) showed there are 3304 residential properties on the market. These include both ‘active’ and ‘pending’ listings. I include those units whose sales are pending because until they close, they’re not sold. And there has been many a fumble twixt contract and key exchange.

Compared with the same week last year, inventory is up. This week last year there were 3024 homes listed.

At the same time, the average list price is down from the same week last year. $222,871 this year versus $244,812 last year.

These prices are averages across all property types, across all zip codes. The ‘price of apples’ in some zip codes is decidedly more robust than in others:

Of course, some of those 3304 listings are indeed slated to close. Keeping a good thought towards that, the break down of active/pending listings in property types is this:

And active/pending by zip code is this:

Sadly, there is a portion of these listings that are foreclosures. The breakdown of the percentage of foreclosures in the overall numbers follow:

Eventually, there will be more buyers and fewer available properties. Until then, maybe we should get used to applesauce.

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.

Wait. I know exactly what I’ll do. A cartwheel.

The National Association of Realtors reports that housing sales nationwide were up – way up – in April. And in Greensboro we did our share. There were 274 closings in April in Greensboro*. That’s the 4th straight month of increases, 18% more than last April and is actually the highest since – wait for it – August of 2008.

Granted, a great deal of this can surely be attributed to the Home Buyers’ Tax Credit which is now a part of our past. But thost 273 properties represent about 548 or happy folks, not including the movers, lenders, Realtors, appliance sales people, and pizza delivery people who benefit from housing sales. (It is almost obligatory that you order pizza to be delivered the at the end of a day of moving furniture. One wonders how people changes domiciles before Domino’s existed)

But there’s more to the upswing than just the raw number of sales. The average listing price and average sales price also increased, whilst the average days on market declined.

And if we look really closely, we see that in April, the percentage of closings that were foreclosures was less in 2010 (19%) than 2009 (27%). That can indicate that the sales in April were not investors look to scarf up deals but homeowners. Awesome.

Sales were up in most Greensboro zip codes, although 27405 and 27406 – those most impacted by foreclosure listings – didn’t enjoy the same lift. (Wow. Look at 27410 in 2007. Looks like it giving the finger to the rest of the graph!)

Who knows what the May sales will show us, but I’ll take four months of improvement over the alternative any day.

Now, please excuse me as I go to practice my cartwheels. If you hear sirens in town, you’ll know I need more work on them.

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities

Along with the gray skies are the latest foreclosure listing numbers for Greensboro. The last few weeks haven’t been great. The week ending 10/11/09 had 21 new foreclosure listings*. That’s the highest weekly number in 2009.

Gray, indeed.

The most recent listings are spread over nearly all the nine residential Greensboro zip codes with only 27409 and 27455 having none. And, again, 27405 and 27406 are the most impacted zip codes, with 8 and 4 new listings, respectively.

Why the uptick in foreclosure listings lately? There are surely several reasons, many of which are beyond me. But in discussing this with a colleague, Leslie Wales-Hecht, a couple of days ago, she pointed out that over the last several months there have been a good many sellers, along with their lenders, trying to stave off foreclosure by going the ‘short sale’ route.

Short sales, she pointed out, are the last stop before foreclosure. And since the short sale process is a long and complicated one, the number of foreclosure listings may be have simply been delayed while the short sale attempts were made. Leslie should know as she is actually a certified Short Sale Specialist and has been up to he pretty eyes in short sales for some time.

For those properties where short sale terms were not able to be worked out the inevitable was merely put off.

Makes sense to me.

Whatever the reason, it will be a delight to report on this site when the numbers start shriveling up and blowing away. Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, some details:

The prices for the the week’s foreclosures range from $15,900 to $329,900. 18 of the 21 are under $100,000 and 14 are under $75,000. Three of the listings are already under contract. Look below for a few listings representative of what is available in the foreclosure market in Greensboro as of today.

1207 Arlington Street, Greensboro, NC $19,900 (MLS#556629)

2627 Stratford Dr, Greensboro, NC $99,900 (MLS#55067)

4200 Peppervine Trail, Greensboro, NC $229,900 (MLS#530680)

As always, whether the news is good or bad, you’ll see it here.

_________________________________________________________

If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities

Looking over the last 6 months, the total number of listings (including ‘active’ and ‘pending’ listings) is 2996*. That’s almost exactly smack-dab in the middle of the highest number of 3091 on May 26th and the lowest of 2892 on March 31st.

And the average list price – $222,900 – is lowest it’s been in that same time period.

This is not particularly welcome news for sellers, but awesome for buyers.

There has been a slight increase in the percentage of foreclosures in these numbers. Four of the nine Greensboro zip codes had a small increase in foreclosure listings: 27405 (+3), 27406(+5), 27410 (+2) and 27455 (+2). 27403 had a reduction (-1)The rest remained the same.

The percentage of overall listings that are foreclosures increased from 189 (6%) to 200 (7%). Nearly all of that gain is in the single-family category.

An example of a listing with an asking price representative of the average is this lovely thing at 1809 Colonial Avenues:

1809 Colonial Ave, Greensboro, NC 27408 $225,000 (MLS#526828)

The average listing price of $222,900 can buy a really nice house in a very nice neighborhood. The example to the left is such a house. With 3 bedrooms and 2 baths this house is representative of the size one would might expect as an “average”.

All in all, the numbers continue to show that Greensboro is following the very general trends of most of the country but without the big ‘ouchies’ some areas are enduring. Good deals are available, nice homes are on the market and a few houses are owned by banks.

Keep watching this space to see what happens next.

And now, the rest of the graphs, please…..

As always, whether the news is good or bad, you’ll see it here.

_________________________________________________________

If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.