Short sales/Foreclosures Increase

The number of homes in jeopardy of foreclosure increased by 27.1% statewide in South Carolina when compared with the fourth quarter of 2008, according to RealtyTrac data. The number of homes across South Carolina in some state of foreclosure increased to 7,016 in the first quarter of this year, from 5,520 in the fourth quarter of 2008. Charleston County bank owned properties increased by more than 150% from the Q4 2007 to Q1 2008, going from 119 to 304. This is not the total number; this just represents what happened in those quarters.

Right now there are about 1250 active listings amongst our inventory of over 10,000 active listings that are either short sales or foreclosures. This is a hard number to get a hold on since many short sales and foreclosures are not listed this way. This number of 1250 is my educated guess based on my knowledge of the market. I expect that number to continue to increase to about 25% of the active market by August. That will present a problem when only about 25% of the active listings are selling.