June Sales in Charleston

June was a great month. We had been about 35% off the number of transactions from 2008 before June. After June, we are only 29% off. That's a lot of ground to make up in one month. Price is still down about 15%. As I noted in an earlier blog, ratified contracts are only off about 10%. And I foresee that the second half of 2009 has to be better than the dismal second half of 2008. Ratified contracts may end up being about equal versus 2008 by the end of the year. However, price should continue to go down. Supply and demand still works and we have way too much supply. Price will continue to go down until we get some of this inventory off the market. As prices go down further, it will be more and more difficult to get a deal to appraise at the contract price. We are already seeing lots of problems with this. The lesson to be learned is that you need to price the home correctly to begin with. Time is not on your side. To get the most money for your home in a declining market, you need to sell it as quickly as possible. It will only be worth less a few months from now. Furthermore, if you overprice it and someone actually buys it and it doesn't appraise, you've just wasted a lot of time. And more so than ever, time is money. Jackie and I have sold 16 homes in less than 30 days for 96% of the list price over the last 2 difficult years. That is just a remarkable statistic. No other realtor can claim anything near that.