Editor’s Note: Each Friday, WRAL TechWire takes a deep dive into the Triangle’s real estate markets, including what’s happening with the rental market and where it’s best to be a buyer or a seller, the topics of this week’s reports.
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RALEIGH – The best place in the nation to be looking to sell a home right now?
That’d be Fayetteville, according to a new report from real estate firm Knock.
The median sale price of homes analyzed in the study was $225,000, with the median home selling after being listed on the market for seven days.
Raleigh-Cary also scores well at 25th. Durham-Chapel Hill comes in at 48th.
The good news about Fayetteville didn’t surprise one veteran agent.
“We’re a very transient market, unlike Raleigh or Charlotte,” said Brian Sharon, licensed real estate agent with Keller Williams in Fayetteville. “People are moving to Fort Bragg, and they’ve got to get a place, or people are leaving Fort Bragg, and need to sell a place.”
“It’s a wonderful market,” said Sharon, who runs a team of 11 agents in the area. “The ability to overprice a house has gone away, so you have to price a house within our market in order to get it to move.”
In Fayetteville, buyers are most interested in homes that are priced under $250,000. “With rates moving up, just by one point, that could change the payment on a house significantly,” he added.
Looking to buy a home? Soaring mortgage rates mean much higher payments
Markets changing
Still, the real estate markets are changing fast, as mortgage rates are now near 7% according to the latest data from Freddie Mac, which found that a typical mortgage rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, with the borrower paying an average of 0.9 discount points, was 6.7%.
As the cost of borrowing increases, people who rely on borrowing money through a mortgage may decrease the maximum price they’d be willing or able to pay for a home. This is why rising interest rates could slow housing markets, though interest rates may remain volatile, said Jon DeHart, branch leader for Movement Mortgage in Durham.
“Market is still trying to find its footing and until there is some comfort in the Fed moves to slow inflation, volatility and will continue,” said DeHart. ” I think inventory and time on market will increase and we will transition into a balanced market and transition from a sellers market.”
Triangle real estate market is slowing but agents warn it may just be seasonal
Prices still rising
Though people keep saying or hearing that the market is going to crash, said Sharon, there are no indicators that a crash is coming to Fayetteville. “The housing prices are still increasing, just at a slower rate.”
Data obtained by WRAL TechWire from Triangle Multiple Listing Service, which has a data-sharing agreement with Longleaf Pine Realtors, shows a year-over-year price appreciation of 12.2% in Cumberland County, where Fayetteville is located with the median sale price of $220,000 last month.
And Winston-Salem ranked third on the list, dropping one spot from the prior month when it had ranked second.
Both cities strongly favor sellers, according to the analysis.
Greensboro finished ranked in eighth place, in a market that favors sellers, but does not do so strongly.
The model used by Knock still forecasts Fayetteville to remain a strong sellers market in August 2023, as well as Winston-Salem and Greensboro, all of which project to remain among the top 10 markets in the country for sellers. Both Durham and Raleigh markets are forecasted to remain sellers markets, but the trend is projected to tilt more toward buyers.
Looking to buy a house in Triangle? ‘Be ready to strike,’ agent says
Where buyers are gaining the upper hand
While the cities across Triad and Triangle are projected to remain sellers markets or balanced markets by Knock, there’s one market in North Carolina that may be tipping in favor of buyers: Charlotte.
The Queen City ranked as the “most tilted to buyers” in North Carolina, according to a spokesperson for Knock, who added that the region is the only market in the state that is officially considered to be in neutral territory when it comes to negotiating power.
“The current level of buyer activity our market has been experiencing this summer is similar to buyer activity we saw during the summer of 2019, which was actually a more sustainable market, said Lee Allen, president of the Canopy Realtor® Association/Canopy Multiple Listing Service in a statement earlier this month. “This year we’ve seen a healthy number of sales each month occurring across the region, just not at the level of sales in 2021. When considering the rapid pace of the market and severe inventory challenges that made the market extremely competitive in 2021, I think we will conclude that 2021 was an unusual year and definitely doesn’t reflect a healthy sustainable market, and certainly not one we can compare today’s activity to.”
And though, for now, the Charlotte market is more normal compared to pre-pandemic markets, that could change, according to the Knock report. The forecast model used by Knock puts Charlotte among a list of 19 real estate markets that are “projected to favor buyers in August 2023, meaning sellers are more likely to accept a lower price than they listed their houses for.”
Housing crash coming? Here’s where there is stability in the Triangle real estate market
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WRAL TechWire reporter Jason Parker, the author of the report and a licensed real estate agent in North Carolina, works with journalists from WRAL.com to track and present market data and report on how people are experiencing the region’s changing real estate markets. These special reports will use the category tag “Triangle Real Estate” or “Triangle Real Estate Market.”
