2008 Percentage of Listings Sold

About 28% of the available residential listings in 2008 actually got sold.

James Island Sales Error

Katy Stech published an article this morning in the weekly business section that compared 2006-2008 prices.

In one paragraph, she stated that James Island sales volume was off by 85% since only 104 homes sold in 2008. The correct number according to the MLS is 444 homes sold on James Island in 2008. This is a significant error on the part of the Post and Courier.

Unemployment, Housing Starts, Mortgage Rates

• Last week, national housing starts fell 15.5% to the lowest since records were kept.
• The number of people continuing to seek unemployment benefits rose to 4.6 million. A year ago 2.7 million people were receiving unemployment checks.
• While mortgage rates are still incredibly low, they did creep back up over 5% after being below that for several weeks.

Charleston Real Estate Market 8th Strongest in Country

Charleston ranked 8th in the country on a list of the strongest real estate markets according to Forbes.com. Forbes.com had Moody's compile a list of the 25 strongest real estate markets in the U.S. You can read the article at http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/07/housing-cities-realestate-forbeslife-cx_do_0107realestatestrong.html