The Greenville area was not immune to Covid this spring as it took hold in March. Home sales declined significantly in April and May but have come back strong in June 2020. The Greenville area just hit a new median home price high of $235,000 for the month of June.
The market continues to remain healthy at this point. Homes under $300,000 still typically sell very fast. The overall Days on Market for June was just 54 days…that’s the time it takes to have the property go under contract and go pending where the inspection contingency has been removed. Homes priced over $300,000 were seeing it take 73 days in June.
Closed sales jumped 13.7% compared to last June to a new high of 1591. Some of that in all likelihood was recaptured from sales that did not happen in April or May.
There’s plenty of new construction inventory coming on line in the Greenville and surrounding area. We’d still like to see more existing housing come up for sale but that is still an uphill battle with homeowners. I am seeing signs that maybe we are at the inventory trough and we’ll start to see better inventory levels in the coming months and years. The problem is, I’ve expected to see this now for two years in-a-row and have been proven wrong each year 🙁
Months supply of housing for sale is another metric to gauge a marketplace. We are just starting to see an uptick here.
The Greenville area continues to see healthy increases in home values and the area continues to see growth in population and jobs. 2019 ended the year with the median home price up 5.7% to $216,745. The average home price is up 5.1% to $251,673 according to the latest home sales statistics published by the Greater Greenville Association of REALTORS®.
Closed sales we believe is a better measure of the overall housing market than is home price appreciation. Price is a lagging indicator. So if sales fall, normally we would expect to see a softening in home prices. However, we are in a somewhat unique market, especially in certain areas of the Greenville area, where we have a real shortage of property. Anyway, 2019 was yet another strong year for the Greenville Area as 14,574 units sold up 6.5% from the previous year.
Some other key data points to consider:
- Days on Market until Sale saw a slight uptick to 53 days up from 51
- Inventory of homes for sale was up 14.2% overall
- Months supply of inventory also moved up from 3.3 to 3.6 months. This is still a sellers market but it it moving toward a more neutral market. Neutral is typically between 4-6 months of inventory. That said, the Greenville area has many micro markets so be sure to check with your professional REALTOR® when trying to understand a particular property in a specific part of town.
The Greenville Journal also published some great information recently that gives a lot of perspective on the Greenville County real estate market.