Monday Morning Coffee - Sellers: Make Sure You are a READY TO GO LISTING

Wilmington NC - Today is Monday April 6th, 2020 and it is another gorgeous Spring day here in the Wilmington area with temps in the 70/80s and sunshine all week long.  As we continue our social distancing strategy to wait-out the Covid-19 pandemic many places in the Wilmington area continue to be closed, including our area beaches.  As a coastal area, us Wilmingtonians are accustomed to hunkering down and waiting things out, and this event is no different.  One thing you will notice about our area is our passion for each other and our tremendous resilience.   There is really a such thing as "Salt Life".

WEEKLY ACTIVITY UPDATE

NEW LISTING TRACKER

You can see that March 2020 was on pace to be a record month for new listings hitting the market, even with the signifcant disruptions starting in early March.  We were seeing a rebound in availability of homes coming to market to help with the massive demand we've been experiencing over the last eighteen months, but that came to an abrupt end in mid-March. 

AVAILABLE HOMES TRACKER

In this chart you can see that for the first time the number of homes available in Wilmington dropped below 1,000 homes.

ABSORPTION TRACKER

You can see that we only have a little over two months of homes available in Wilmington.  Once we move past the stay at home period in our area we are likely going to see a tremendous shortage of homes available as compared to the massive demand we are forecasting for the Summer and Fall of 2020.  We had expected a strong year but now it appears we may see an entire year's selling being done in the third and fourth quarters, which will benefit "ready to go" sellers and put a lot of pressure on buyers to find and purchase homes.  We expect homes in the Wilmington area that are priced in the $200's and $300's to see even more multiple offers and possibly run into challenging appraisal issues as prices may increase faster than historical home sales comps can be created.  Even in the midst of this pandemic we are seeing areas continue to have multiple offers and new homes sell faster than we can put them on the ground.  

If You Are Thinking About Selling, Make Sure You Get "READY TO GO" Now, While Everyone Else Is "Waiting".