The Willis Journal is a real estate analysis journal for Myrtle Beach and the surrounding markets giving an analysis for the area and some of the communities. The Willis Team Professionals have created this information to help our public to better understand what is currently going on in the real estate market. You will see that we also have created an analysis for specific communities within some of the cities in and around surrounding areas. We are located in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Our site will be updated with real estate sales analysis for the Myrtle Beach market on a regular basis.
Here is a really great segment shown on the Today Show talking about this new book, “How to Make a Fortune” by Ron Insana. There is some great information here! To understand what I am talking about, watch below. (it may take a few seconds to load).
Now, after watching, what are your thoughts on this?
We completed an analysis for the MLS on 1/03/2010 comparing year to year variances so that we can have a better understanding of what is happening here at the Beach. In 2006, we sold $3,496,983,112 through the CCAR MLS for Horry Brunswick, and Georgetown counties. In 2009, we sold $1,345,706,590 for a -61.52% decrease. The decrease from 2008 is -13.42% which is the smallest decrease in the last 3 years. We calculate the monthly numbers decrease/increase as well and have the graph showing this for you below for 2009.
As you can see from the graph, we have seen improvement over last year’s numbers since July, and November showed the largest increase for the year of over 85%. Based on our call activity, we expect this trend to continue to improve. The total number of units available in the MLS has dropped from 19,348 units as of 10/31/2006 to 15,984 as of 1/03/2010 which is a 17.39% drop in total units. The largest decrease was in condos with Land increasing from 3,732 units to 4,734 units.
We feel that banks have really hurt the market with land sales as well as reducing land’s value. A couple years ago, the banks gave interest only loans for land at 95% with a 3 to 5 year balloon payment. Land used to be the easiest to get financing. Today many banks don’t loan on land and if they do, they will only loan on 75% of the new appraised value and many of the loans they gave in the past: they have called and people are not able to get financing based on what they owe. In many cases they are trying to short sale their property or are foreclosed on.
There are many people that believe the reason we saw the increase in sales since July was due to the government incentive, but it only accounted for a small part of the increase. It is amazing that we have seen condo sales increase, especially since it so hard to get financing for condos and condotels. You could get 90% financing a couple of years ago and today most of the loans for condos are 80 to 75% of the appraised value of the units. The interest rates are still the best that we have seen in years with homes under 5% for people with excellent credit.
It has been a tough 3 years in Real Estate and we expect things to improve over the next several months as long as something drastic does not change in our economy! If you have any questions concerning this analysis, give us a call and we will be glad to answer your questions. I have attached a video from the Today Show for you to see.
I have had a lot of people ask questions concerning the tax credits and recently someone forwarded this link that answers all of the questions. Hopefully this will be helpful. Click HERE or visit: http://www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com/
