Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Selling Greenville your favorite real estate podcast here in Greenville South Carolina, I'm your host as always Stan McCune Realtor right here in Greenville South Carolina, and you can find all of my contact information in the show notes need to reach out to me for any of your real estate needs just a reminder as always please like, rate, review, subscribe if you don't know if you've done any of those things just scroll down your app try to look for a plus sign or subscribe button or if there's 5 stars and they're blank hit the 5-star button if they're not blank then you probably already did it a few little ideas there but I appreciate all you guys my listeners I've had several people reach out lately that I hadn't communicated with before tell me that they were listening and I genuinely do always appreciate that like there's never a time that someone tells me that they're listening to the show that it's just kind of like oh that's nice and you know that it doesn't resonate with me in some way
it always always resonates with me and I always just really appreciate finding out
because when I first started the show like I literally told my wife I don't know if anyone's going to listen to this right outside of like my immediate family and friends it turns out actually my immediate family and friends don't really listen don't really listen much to the show my dad when he was alive he listened to every single episode, and he would you know text me little things here and there you know he would he would say it nothing super deep but he would just say that was an interesting topic that you talked about this week you know just stuff like that but I appreciated that, and I appreciate you know and I I think some people think that they're like bothering me when they reach out to me or you know he must be so busy I don't wanna bug him no bug me if I'm too busy I just won't respond right to a a message that's not directly important to work but I'm gonna respond okay let's just be real, if I get it I'm going to respond if I don't respond I didn't get it But anyway, all that to say thank you guys, and and if you could just do those few little things to support the show, I'd appreciate that and if you could use me as your realtor I'd really appreciate that or if you could refer to me to someone as well my mom, who usually listens to the show as far as I know she was telling me about how her old realtor in the Myrtle Beach area calls her every few months to say hey do you know anyone that that needs a realtor in the area can you can you send them my way I'm not that type of realtor where I'm I'm gonna be, you know, calling people up you know, every six months or whatever and and bugging them about you know, hey who do you know that needs a realtor right now but I have the show you guys are listening to the show and so I'm gonna make that ask here if you know someone that you think might need a realtor let me know, or perhaps you know a realtor that's kind of floundering they might need some guidance let me know about them as well because I'd like to meet with them and potentially talk to them about joining the team, which, by the way brings me to the next point and that is that I'm doing meetings this summer that I'm calling jokingly swinging meetings and yeah if you don't get the joke, that's fine but the swinging is not what it sounds like the swinging is swinging golf clubs so I've got the top golf summer pass it's good pretty much every day but during weekdays it's good until five PM, so you we would have to do something really prior to three PM, right to start and then on week weekends it's only good until noon but I
I wanna have interesting meetings with people right
it's always it's always fun to
to get together and and sit down and have coffee
but what could be more fun than getting together and
you know hitting
golf balls at Top Golf
and if you've not been to Top Golf
it's it's tremendous fun all skill levels
you don't have to be good at golf at all
I'm terrible at golf
so if you're good at all
you're gonna destroy me and that's totally fine
we'll have a good time
hit some balls and have a nice swinging meeting
so if you're interested in that
let me know again contact info in the show notes
I wanna try to meet with a lot of people this summer
I wanna do I ideally I'd like
like to do
if if my schedule permits
I'd like to do 2 top golf swinging meetings per week
if possible
but it's gotta work with everyone else's schedule right
and only being during
during work hours
during business hours might be a challenge
so let me know if you or or
or someone else could be interested if you're
if you're a lender not really wanting to
to get together with lenders right now
I don't need to do that
unless you're a lender that has a
has a real estate client that doesn't have a realtor
then that could be an interesting opportunity for
for me to partner with you
and to see how you work as a lender
so there are some
there's a lot of different ways to skin the cat
a lot of different opportunities out there
but those are just a few things that I have going on
now I just came back last week from Washington
DC where we had the realtor legislative meetings
I do want to talk about that
but we're not gonna talk about that this week
I'll probably talk about that next week
and tell you guys a little bit
about what happened I met with
with
Senator Scott Tim Scott
also met with
William Timins
Sherry Biggs
a few others that
that I was able to get together with
and then you know
we had 10,000 realtors there
so I was able to hear some of the buzz and
and some of the things that were going on at that point
and and all of this
the the whole thing with Elon Musk
and Donald Trump went down while I was in DC
so that was fun as well
I did miss the
the parade that's getting a lot of buzz right now sadly
I
I I did
I wasn't there long enough to see the parade
so I can't report back on
on whether what the media is saying about the parade
was accurate or not
but
but I'll I will talk about the DC trip at some point
it'll probably be next week
but this week we need to talk about the market okay
we just got just a day or two ago the the
monthly indicators as they're now called
they used to be called market stats
the monthly indicators
for the Greater Greenville Association of Realtors
and we're going to dive straight into this
make sure I pull up the right one
because I've got a few of them open
a few historical ones open in addition to the current
so here's the current ones okay
there's some interesting stuff in here
I'm not going to get too bog down here
but I I wanna go through
go through these and
and discuss everything with you guys alright
so let's start with new listings data and I'm
I'm pulling up if you're watching on YouTube
which I recommend you'll be able to see these
and you also see I'm looking away
that's cause I have last month stats pulled up as well
okay so we have now had most months for the past
really several years
have been seeing new listings data increase
year on year we did have one down month in January
and I think Helen had something to
to do with that
Helen definitely impacted the numbers in November
and then you had you know
everyone listed a bunch of homes in in December
as the backlog from Halloween eased up
and then I think
you know January then everyone took a step back
there were still some properties damaged from Helene
those eventually started to trickle back onto the
onto the market later in the year
for the month of may
we had an 18.7% year on year increase
that's a big number okay
this is in new listings okay
so this is newly listed homes
and so
the number that we had for new listings was 2,683
what's more significant to me than the 18.7%
increase year over year from the 2,261 in may
is that this is the highest number of
of new listings that we've ever had
since this has been tracked
and it is now the third straight month
that we've set the record
March was the highest we've ever had
then April
and now may is the highest that we've ever had
so some very interesting data
and here's the thing
if if we follow normal historical trends
there's a good chance
that we haven't topped out for the year yet
now I tend to think that
this will probably end up being the highest
new listings number for the year
but it's very possible that it's not
there have been
plenty of other years when June or July ended
up being the peak of of new listings for the year
I tend to think I
I I think that this is gonna be the highest
but if you're looking on YouTube
you can see it is way above everything else
so a lot of people are trying to sell their homes
right now okay
and we've been talking about this for a while
there's more sellers right now than there are buyers
now a lot of sellers are also wanting to buy
but there's a lot of sellers just wanting to sell
and that's being reflected in the data here
just a lot of new listings coming up pending sales
this number is always lower
for the most recent month than it should be
these this is the number of
properties in which an offer has been accepted
so these are the number of properties
that go under contract so may is listed as 881
which is way too low okay
this number is usually off by about 600
so we're probably going to end up in the high 1400s
maybe low 1500s
that's still going to be a year on year decrease
assuming I'm right from may of last year
which was 1,578 let's go back to April
now that we have the revised April numbers
we can see that I told you guys last month
I thought April was gonna be slightly low a
a slight decrease year on year
or it would be flat
it would be pretty close one way or the other
it ended up being a slight decrease
a 2.4% decrease year on year
so April 2024 had 1,617 pending sales
that went down to April 25 of 1,578 pending sales
so after a long time okay
we've had many many months going back to last year
where we had positive year on year pending sales
more people than the previous or
or more homes going under contract
in a month than the previous year
we've now had at least one month and I believe it'll
once the made data gets revised
it'll be two straight months of pending sales data
being down year on year so again
we talked about the market getting softer
in
in some ways it has been getting softer in other ways
not as much right
this is one of the ways it has gotten softer
is in the pending sales data
now as we've talked about in the past
fewer homes are falling out from under contract
than what we've had in previous years
that shows up in the closed sales
so typically if if pending sales are down
you would expect closed sales to be down
that's not the case
closed sales for the month of may were up
9% year on year up to 1,763
and not only is that a big increase from the 1,617
closed sales in may of 24
but that is the second highest number of
closed sales that we've ever seen
ever in the Greenville market
so may had a lot of transactions that happened
and April did as well April
you know it was a
it was a strong March a
a strong April overall but may really
you know it again
if you're looking at the chart
may just skyrocketed it
and I don't think that we're going to
continue to see that for the entire year
I think that
you know my own business personally
I had a lot of closings in may
I've already kind of felt the crunch
the slowdown
that we always experience this time of year
so the the peak season
what I always tell people
I consider the peak season to be March to may
now
there is a broader peak season that goes basically
through Labor Day right
you could say it March through August
but the peak of the peak season is March to may
really April and may are are really
really the the
the two most important months
sometimes March can be thrown in there as well
I think for sure this year we can throw March in there
and we can expect things to start now
coming back down to reality and
and slowing down a little bit
which is the normal seasonal trend you see every
every single year has kind of a Mountain Top
kind of shape to it in terms of these charts
where it peaks out usually around may
sometimes June
usually by July we're we're kind of asleep
usually July is a little bit of down month
then we have a little bit of a bounce back in August
and then it starts to kind of
wind down for the for the remainder of the year
days on market until sale flat
an exact 46 that we had exactly a year ago
46 days on market until sale
now this is significant from this standpoint okay
I've been trying to give you guys
you know little nuggets something to
to hang on this all this date on cause I
I know it's just it's just tons and tons of numbers
what what's significant about the fact that
that this number was flat
is that this is the first time in a long time
that it's been flat and
and again if you're looking on YouTube
you can see that we've been up year on year
the entire year in fact
going all the way back to last year up
year on year and days on market until sale
what does that mean taking longer for homes to sell
well may of this year was the first time in
I don't know how long I'd have to
I'd have to go back and see
I mean it was a
it's a really long time ago
let me let me see let me pull up something
yeah no I
I'd have to
I'd have to keep going back and looking at like
old historical data
but we have to go back over a year
at the very least before we have a
a month where we weren't seeing an increase
in the days on market until sale
and and so basically
more or less
since mortgage rates started going up in 2022
it's been taking longer for homes to sell
that was actually a good thing
homes were selling way too fast during the pandemic
we needed some kind of stabilization
the question is
sometimes you don't reach stabilization right
you know
when you're doing a roller coaster
if you if you've ever gone on roller coasters
one thing that is at least for me
is comforting when I'm going on a roller coaster I
I do like me a good a good roller coaster
not the wooden kind I like the
I like the the harness kinds that
that do the the quick movements
but I'm not a big fan of the ones that are just like
straight down free falls or where you
you you don't exactly know where you're going
but there is always comfort in the fact that
you know within just a few seconds
you're gonna hit the bottom or you're gonna hit the top
or whatever the case may be
and that whatever that feeling of fear is you're
you're it's not going to last for very long because
obviously the coaster has a top and it has a bottom
and that's that
the scary thing about looking at some of this data is
we don't know where the tops or the bottoms are when
when the market is shifting
well at the moment
it appears like we have brushed up against perhaps
the top of days on market
so whereas it's been taking for every year now
for three years
it's been taking longer for homes to sell
for the first time we're seeing in the data
that it might not be right
in comparison to the previous year
so at the moment if you want a a ballpark figure
how long does it take to sell your home is 46 days
now that's not when you get your money okay
that's 46 days until you go under contract
then it's usually another 30 to 45 days after that
before you close and that's assuming you don't
fall out from being under contract okay
and again
the fact that pending sales are coming down
but closing sales are going up
or close sales are going up
is is a very very strong indicator
that not very many homes are falling out
from being under contract
so that's good
that means homes are being priced correctly
that means sellers are are
appropriately
conditioning their homes prior to hitting the market
that means that the negotiations in the middle
over repairs are happening
and and everyone's reaching consensus
so there's a there's a lot of there
there's a lot of ways to look at this data oops
sorry I hit my mic there for a second
there's a lot of ways to look at this data
and come to negative conclusions
but there's tons of positive things to look at in here
and I'd rather focus on that
because you can turn on Fox News
and get all the negativity that you well
actually these days
Fox News is a little bit more positive
cause their guy is is in DC
but you can turn on the news
you can turn on MSNBC and what not and get your
your negativity all day median sales price
this is basically what we look at
when we're trying to reverse engineer okay
what is the average price
of of a single family home in Greenville
this is what we look at the median sales price
I prefer to look at this than the average
we'll look at the average next
but the median it's just the middle number
it's usually gonna be the most accurate
indicator of what the standard home is selling for
because averages are skewed
you know if we have a bunch of two 3
4 million dollar homes that that sell
which is not super common in the Greenville market
that can skew the average okay
so what's the median
the median had the largest
year on year increase that we have had in over a year
okay the
the median went up
you're over your two and a half percent
that's significant
okay given all that we're talking about now again
may was a very strong month
we might see this recede a little bit
but what is that median sales number
it was 322,900 so if someone ask you
what is the average home cost in Greenville right now
basically 323,000 is the answer
that's up again two and a half percent from the 3
14 9 that it was in may of 2024
now one thing I was looking at here
when I was kind of assessing this data was like
you know what I'm curious
cause if you look
we've been kind of bouncing around now
for the past three years after many
many years of of clear upward
growth and in appreciation for years
we've been just kind of bouncing around and
and we are kind of slowly making our way up
but we've not seen that normal
the normal appreciation
that we see in the Greenville market
the past few years and that's to be expected right
we had artificial appreciation during the
during the pandemic
and we all know that
but one thing I was just curious about
and I think you guys might be curious as well
oops
sorry I'm trying to
trying to change something on a on my screen here
which you guys
which will make sense to you guys here in a second
but I wanted to see okay
so we're at 323,000 roughly where should we be right
if if everything were just normal and had stayed normal
we hadn't had a pandemic would we be at this number
okay or would we be less or might we even be higher
what how did the pandemic kind of skew these numbers
well there's an imperfect way of doing this
this is kind of how a a lot of analysts will
will kind of do this is you basically just look at
when you've got a trend line from many
many years
just look at that trend line and then reverse engineer
just keep the line going
and until you reach the current year
so I'm gonna do that here while you're on
while you're able to see my screen
and here's what I'm gonna do
I'm just gonna take the basically we came out of the
from from a housing standpoint
we started to see normal levels of appreciation
after 2011
okay'cause you had the global financial crisis 2007
2008
the housing market
continued to be depressed for several more years
after 2,011 it started to normalize
so I'm going to go off of the peak month in 2,011
and then continue on through the peak month of 2,019
and then again if you're looking on YouTube
you'll see what I'm looking at
and that is that if we hadn't had the pandemic
probably
the median sales price right now would be around 2
80 and it's at 3:23 so
something definitely
fundamentally changed during the pandemic
and the question is
was it artificial or not and I think the data
you know a lot of people were
were arguing even with me about this
that what happened during the pandemic that it
it wasn't going to hold because it was artificial right
it was just all based on low mortgage rates
it was all based on people going crazy
losing their mind during
during the pandemic and all of that
the problem with that is that
prices haven't come back down to this level
they've not even come close to it
I mean in the beginning of 2023 in February
you know we saw prices in the
the high two nineties
but they've almost the entire time
since the pandemic been in the or
or not since the pandemic
but at least since
2022
have almost the entire time been in the three hundreds
they've just been kind of bouncing around in
in in the low three hundreds
so by this point
I think that we can conclude that
that the market has kind of stabilized and that sellers
you know they're just not willing to sell down in
in this number
this price point anymore where it would have been
if we hadn't had the pandemic
sellers have so much equity now
they can just hold on to their home
and so homes home prices
you know
there's not a whole lot of evidence in the data
that they're going to come down
no matter what you or I
or anyone else would like to see
now what about the average
the average
hit into the four hundreds once again
so if you really wanna know what the actual average is
it's 402,777
that was a three and a half percent increase
year on year
I'm gonna do the same little thing that I did here
sorry
the same little thing that I did for the median
take the
take the trend line from
from 2,011 and continue it on
and what that would tell me is that the average
really should be probably about
you know if we hadn't had the pandemic
the average would be about 320,000
and the set is 402,777
so again
the pandemic fundamentally altered the housing market
making it less affordable
and there's no evidence that it'll ever go back and
and if you're looking at this average sales price
trend line it's even more clear
it hasn't had the bounciness of the median
the average has just continued to go up and again
as I alluded to before a lot of that has to do
with the fact that we just have a lot
more
expensive homes being sold in the Greenville market
now than we had in the past
there's a lot more demand for
1.52 million 2.5 million
3 million and above houses
and that might surprise you right
so I I
some people just don't realize that
there's a market for that
but there but there really is
and
I can show you guys that at the end
percent of list price received
this is
the percentage found when dividing a property's
sales price by its most recent list price
then taking the average for all properties
sold in a given month
not accounting for seller concessions
this number
somewhat helpful and not the most helpful number
but it can be helpful
particularly when you look at historical trends
it's at 98.6%
that's a point one % decrease from 98.7%
so it sellers are getting point one % less
then they in terms of the overall
percentage of sales price
then they were getting a year ago
that's really not important right
that's point one % you're
you're that's a
that's a rounding error right
the important thing is that this is
very much in line with pre pandemic trends
so sellers should feel like
if they are pricing their home correctly
they should be getting
close to in terms of from a percentage standpoint
the amount that they were getting prior to the pandemic
so that's good again
stability normalization
we love to see it what we
don't love to see
is the housing affordability index going down
talked about this many times
this number this is a way to encapsulate
three things into one number
it's encapsulating home prices
mortgage rates and average income for
for the area or
or median household income specifically
and so it puts all of those numbers together
and then comes up with a single number
that tells you what affordability is
and you want the number to be 100 or higher
that tells you that the median household
can afford the median priced home
given prevailing interest rates
and it's for the most part has been below 100
for the last couple of years
we did have September 24th went to 1:04
that was because mortgage rates came down okay
that's the only reason why that happened
but it's down to 93
which is the lowest number we've had in
well since July of last year
and that is a decrease from the 94
housing affordability index that we had last year
last may
so affordability still stuck in the MUD
not surprising right
because incomes they have gone up a little bit
but home prices we just showed also have gone up
and mortgage rates are still elevated right now
now their mortgage rates are bouncing a little bit
but nothing really substantial happening
on that front
so housing affordability still not what we would
like it to be we would like
for the median household income to be able to afford
the median priced home
currently they can't inventory of homes for sale
this number is always artificially inflated
this is the reverse of the pending sales number
that I talked about
that's always lower than it should be
this number is always higher than it should be
so let's look back at April
when April numbers came out last month
it said we had 500 sorry
5,681 homes for sale at the end of the month of April
that got revised down to 5,011
which is basically what I expected to happen
it's usually revised by about 4 to 500
that's still a huge increase year over year from
April 24 which wasn't even 4,000
so that was a 26.9% increase
so the number of homes for sale right now
there's a lot more of them than we have seen in a very
very long time so if you're looking at the chart
don't look don't look at that top number
that top number is gonna come down a little bit
but you can see that the
that the other that the
that the next number is basically in line with like
2015 2014 levels of inventory
there was quite a bit of inventory back then
now may clocked in again high 6,110
that's gonna come down into the mid 5 thousands
most likely mid to high five thousands
that's still going to be a massive
massive increase over the 4,187
units for sale
in at the end of May 2024
so we're seeing inventory starting to pile up here
and you know
at what point can we expect for
for inventory to to get
to be so much
that perhaps that starts to be a drag on pricing
I I don't really know
if I had to guess
I would guess maybe in the 7,000 range
because that's
where we were during the global financial crisis
now in theory
demand should be stronger than it was during the GFC
but at the same time I would still expect for
for home prices you know
for that to be a drag at that point
so
let's keep a close eye on this
if we start to get into the
truly into the 6 which I don't think we are yet
like I said this data will get revised
but once we start to get into the 6
are we gonna start creeping up
cause normally this is a
a seasonal number as well
but we wouldn't expect to be at the peak yet
we're norm
we don't normally see inventory peaking until really
the second half of the year
usually oftentimes it
inventory peaks in August or September
so we've still got a long ways to go
would it shock me if we hit 7,000
yes it would
but it wouldn't shock me that much
so stay tuned on that month supply of inventory
no surprise this is going up as well
now the main number inflated because we're dividing
this number divides total inventory by pending sales
both those numbers are wrong
as we've already said they'll get revised
so looking at April April
got up to 3.6 months of inventory
this is the highest that we've had since the pandemic
that was a 20% increase from April of last year
which was 3 months so
what what does that mean
that means if
if no new homes came on the market
it would take 3.6 months for all of the current
inventory to get absorbed
now traditionally that's still
that would still be considered a pretty hot seller's
market
but we've already talked about how
there's some conflicting stuff in some of this data
it's not a hot sellers market OK
it's just that
what's happening
doesn't
make a lot of sense in terms of historical norms
and so we need to really
reassess this month's supply of inventory
I I really think that
if we got to four and a half months of
of inventory it would start to feel really soft
and so
I'm really tracking
this a lot more than the total inventory that
that 7,000 total units number that I gave out
that was more of a guess
I feel pretty confident that four
and a half months of inventory that we would start to
to really feel like we're shifting to a buyer's market
so we're at 3.6 the month of April
now it said may was at 4.6
that's definitely gonna get revised back
revised down cause last month
April came in at 4.3 and then got revised down
basically
point seven down to 3.6
so we can expect for may to be probably
in the high threes you know 3.9
3.84 right right in 3.8 to four months of inventory
okay
so we gotta keep track in this because like I said if
if we start to see this go into the mid to high fours
I think that we're going to
we would start to see some softness
in some of the other data and and
and and really see
really see potentially even prices coming down
now don't expect prices to come down
I'm just saying that that's something that
that we could see if the month supply of inventory
continues to soften in the way that it has so far
now I I told you guys that I was going to
to reference the
the the increase in homes that are
that are on the expensive side of things
that are selling and so yeah
that's exactly what we've what we're experiencing
I've talked about this before
but in the 750,000 to million dollar price
point that went up 16% year on year
we we had 508 of those sales in may versus
versus 438 the year before
and we had a slight increase in million and above
we had 477 sales million and above 475 the year before
so that's what's pushing that average sales price up
is those more expensive homes
there's
there's more money in the Greenville market right now
than a lot of people realize
and there's people that that are looking for
for those 750 and above properties
and I don't see that changing anytime soon cause
you know
we we've got a a a we've got the what you know
people used to call the 1 percenters
remember that was a really popular term
the 1 percenters they're here in Greenville
and they didn't used to be here in Greenville as much
but now there's quite a few of them here in Greenville
and they're driving
a lot of this you you might call it luxury housing
you might just call it expensive housing
I don't know what you want to call it
but they're
but they're driving that and and pushing up
the average home sale above 400,000
but remember the median is really what we need to
base our analysis off of that's at roughly 323,000
and so
if you ask me
what is the average home in Greenville cost
I'm gonna tell you basically 320
325,000 something like that
I think that that's the most accurate way to go
so hopefully that was all helpful for you guys
we will talk it
I've got a lot of great content
I've got some good interviews coming up
that I'm really excited to share with you guys
hope you enjoyed all of the content while I was gone
I got you guys some different stuff in there
some stuff that I hadn't done before
so hopefully you enjoyed that
please let me know give me some feedback
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and we will talk again next time!