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 and you can find all of my contact information in the show notes if you need to reach me for any of your real estate needs and please like rate review subscribe all those good things with regard to the show to support the show to make sure you don't miss future episodes and all of that hey I've been busy I've been busy I'm actually recording this on a Sunday I almost never record episodes on Sundays but I can look ahead my week and know it's gonna be a crazy week it just makes sense for me to do a Sunday episode of course I won't be releasing this until Wednesday of this upcoming week but I have some very very interesting perhaps even juicy market stats that we need to go over some trends that have been long standing that were bucked in the month of February so let's hop right in and I'm going to screen share with you my lovely people watchers and listeners good episode to watch if you are interested in actually seeing the charts that I am going to lay out for you guys alright so there's gonna be a there's gonna be a lot to cover here but we're just gonna go through this the way we normally do new listings new listings were up 9.1% for the month of February they went from 2011 in last February to 2195 this February what does that mean 9.1% increase that's still some pretty strong increases in in new listings it's not as strong as what we had seen last year where many of the months were in the 20s year over year so new listings are starting to slow down right the pace of growth of new listings is not what it was last year but we are still seeing higher new listings growth year over year and we're going to talk about that in a little bit what that means pending sales after January pending sales in the month of January were down 2.1% year over year they bounced back up 2% year over year in February now this is not what I expected and I'm gonna tell you why last month when we went over the market stats when I did that silly episode from inside my truck if you remember the the month of January was impacted by two winter events I told you guys this I told you guys I was not going to overreact to any of the any of the data that we were looking at if any of it was low kind of to be expected when you have a month that where you basically lose two weekends but I was expecting there to be a decent sized rebound in the month of February to account for those two lost weekends although I did say if I remember myself correctly that there was a possibility that we could just lose those two weekends right sometimes that happens sometimes when there's a big event like that big weather events it doesn't just defer business sometimes actual business just gets lost well I would expect the pending sales number to be higher than a 2% year over year increase if we were seeing a rebound of activity now if we did see a rebound of activity in the month of January and that showed up in the February numbers but we only had a 2% increase that could mean that actually February was trending to be a year over year decrease in pending sales as well so this is a very in my opinion and a very very soft number and we are starting off the year extremely soft with pending sales which is interesting and here's the thing my year has started off pretty strong in comparison to last year at least but I am talking to other realtors and finding that that it is not that way for them now I made some changes to my business last year everything in real estate takes a while to for you to really see the impact so the changes I made last year I'm finally starting to see that that impact my business this year and I'm obviously very glad that I did that but I think a lot of what I'm hearing from a lot of agents that didn't really make any changes last year they're finding this year that it's be it's a really soft year so far and that's showing up in in the data and what what's interesting is that I also track a lot of national data and national data hasn't been that bad in fact a lot of places are seeing somewhat of a rebound in buyer activity but that's not happening in the Greenville market right now according to this data I overreacted to those two snowstorms in January I'm just gonna own that the data so far this year has been pretty soft and we're going to continue to see that as we go along and you know I've got clients moving here from other areas I had one recently tell me that that they are about to list their home in the Houston market and expecting it to take 8 to nine months that's an eternity like that was like what it was like during the global financial crisis here in Greenville so there are some markets that are really soft obviously real estate super duper seasonal Greenville not nearly that soft but this you know I told you guys that I thought it was a soft sellers market to start the year based on the data I'm seeing so far it's not feeling very sellers market like just looking at this data so jury is still out but it's definitely trending in the other direction at this point and again here close sales two straight months of negatives three out of the past four months have been negative in terms of close sales year over year again January I chalk that up to to two winter events that makes me even more nervous because February January was a 7.1% decrease in closed sales year over year February was a 4% decrease year over year so we went from 1189 closed sales last year to 1141 closed sales in February of this year if we hadn't had those two weekends of of that we lost this past in the month of January that February number might have been even lower I'm gonna provide some color for this cause it in a little bit so hang tight not everything is doom and gloom if you're a seller there is a silver lining here that that we will discuss momentarily days on market until sale our highest number it hits 71 days on market until sale for the month of February so not eight to nine months but is it now approaching two and a half months yes it is and importantly this is this is the highest number that we have seen since 2016 alright so it's been 10 years since Greenville has seen it take this long for a home to go under contract 10 years and I discussed with you guys that the last week I believe that the war in Iran is not helping things we've seen mortgage rates go from roughly 5.99 according to Mortgage News Daily to 6 point 4 6.41 I think maybe right in that range and there's a likelihood that it's gonna continue to go up that's gonna put a damper on all of these things I always tell you guys you know when I make predictions at the at the beginning of the year and all of that I always say one thing that I don't account for in these predictions is there going to be a worldwide major event like a pandemic like a war something like that well guess what's happening we're not yet we haven't had a pandemic knock on wood hopefully we won't get one but here we are in the middle of a war that appears to only be escalating I sure hope it gets wrapped up and that it doesn't continue escalating but at the moment that that doesn't seem to be the case it seems like we're gonna be dragged into this for a few more weeks maybe a few more months God forbid longer than that so we'll have to keep track but February up to 71 days on market until sale up from 62 days last February so it's taking longer to sell your home than it ever has since in the in the past 10 years and this takes us to the median sales price right the number that everyone wants to see and unsurprisingly we saw a decrease in the median sales price year over year for the month of February our first decrease in over a year it went down to 312,500 that's a point eight % decrease from the 314 nine that it was at in February of 2025 so prices going down housing got a little bit cheaper year over year also it got a little bit cheaper month over month that is highly highly irregular for this time of year we basically had now three straight months where our pricing has been basically bouncing between 3 12 and 3:00 13 so not a whole lot is happening on that front again I'm gonna add some color to that in a second also for the first time in a really long time the average sales price saw a decrease only 1.1% decrease it went from 3 99 in change last year to 3 98 in change this year this February but still very unusual trends again it this is showing that things are softening if you are a buyer or a seller if you're a buyer this is great this is great news if you're a buyer if you're a seller you're not as as bullish on these numbers now the one number that did swing a little bit more towards the sellers is the percent of list price received sellers are now getting 98 percent of what they have a home listed for so if they have it listed for 100,000 they can expect to get 98,000 now this does not account for if there are any price decreases or closing costs are being covered by the seller it doesn't account for any of that but it is at 98 which went up a little bit from January but that's still a little bit of a decrease from February of last year which was 98.1% that's pretty negligible though right that there's a lot that can that can cause a point one % decrease I wouldn't make too much of that but we're in line with historical norms when it comes to that so that means that sellers are coming to and they have been coming to reality on what their homes are worth in this market needless to say the housing affordability index looks really good right now 103 as we discussed before we want it to be over 100 or more that is what's considered an affordable market and that hundred three print is up from what it was 100 in February so you know I don't want this to sound like all doom and gloom right because wherever the market shifts it's hurting some people and helping others now when a market is really bad right when the real estate market is really bad that's typically because the economy is really bad and when that happens then that just means that everything is bad right it it's more than just and sorry I need to double check make sure that everything with zoom is going okay here I record all these videos on zoom the the reality is that when it shifts towards a buyer as long as the economy is not in the toilet that's good for buyers if it shifts too far and becomes such a buyer's market that the economy is in the toilet that nobody can buy houses that's bad for everyone and so there's a fine little line there there's a fine balance between a healthy buyers market and an unhealthy one there's a lot and quite frankly this same thing for the sellers market right we had a sellers market during the covid period of time was that a healthy sellers market no that was a as one person as Logan Botoshani with Housing Wire called it a savagely unhealthy housing market we don't want those big pendulum swings in either direction we like things to kind of stay in the center right if it's a soft sellers market that's fine if it's a soft buyers market that's fine we don't want those extremes nobody wants that all right inventory of homes for sale 28.2% increase year over year for the month of February it's up to 5,444 homes for sale up from 4,247 last year that's a obviously a huge increase 28.2% it's right in line with more or less what we've been seeing the past year and you know our inventory is hovering at you know 2012 levels right now which is which is crazy I mean 2012 was basically from the standpoint of the housing market the end of the global financial crisis that was when we started to like really see the recovery and so that's a a big number now demand is higher here in Greenville than it was in 2012 and for that reason the months supply is nothing close to what it was in 2012 when it was hovering around 10 months of supply but it is creeping up a little bit it's at 3.7 months of supply up from 3.0 three months of supply in February of last year that's a 23.3% increase we've been running 20+ percent increases year over year since July of last year but 3.7 is still historically low now I've said over and over and over again if we hit 4 to four and a half somewhere in in there it would really really feel like a buyer's market I'm leading more towards it being around that four number and so if we start creeping up if we hit fours you know in the spring summer season and that continues to go up into the fall season like it normally does we could really feel like we're in a buyer's market at that point now what's the color that I want to add to you guys I introduced to you guys info Sparks Software a few months ago this is a new thing that well new as of last year that the Greater Greenville Association of Realtors in conjunction with Showing time is providing really great data the data varies slightly from the from the data that we just looked at cause there's a lot of different ways to aggregate the data and there's some data lags some you know whatever you guys know data isn't exactly data right it's we think about it as like it is a hard and fast always the same never changing that's not exactly true because the means of pulling that data and all of that varies from one source to the next but what I wanna show you guys is the divergence between new construction and existing homes and we're gonna start with the median sales price and here is where things are interesting the reason why the median sales price went down year over year is because of new construction new construction went down 2.8% according to Info sparks year over year previously owned homes right so if you're a homeowner selling your home that is a previously owned home actually saw a price increase of 4.8% year over year went up to 330,000 that's up from February of 25 it was 314 basically 315,000 and so what the reason why the price came down was because new construction came down now you'll see that in all construction types it says that there wasn't a change at all again year over year there's gonna be a little bit of a conflict in the data I have always used those monthly indicators that we just looked at and I'm gonna continue to use that and I'm just gonna supplement info with info sparks to provide the color so I'm not going off this number I'm going off the other number that we did see a point eight % decrease in the median sales price but I do think that the color that this provides is that that decrease was the result of new construction coming down and you can see new construction you know the cost of new construction has they've attempted I'm gonna pull this out to five years they have bounced around you know the 3:20 to 3:30 range if you're looking on on YouTube you can see that magenta whatever color line that's your new construction it was bouncing around in 3:20 to 3:30 range until until basically may of like of of 20 24 and since then it's really struggled to get over 3 20 it's jumped over 3 20 a few times but the past several months it's been bouncing around in the low three hundreds that's what's dragging things down so if you're a new construction agent you don't want to hear that right those are the people that don't want to hear this the rest of you do want to hear that that's good for the most part for the average home seller if you're a buyer need to be aware there are deals to be had on new construction there's a reason why so many of my clients right now are buying new construction the majority of my clients are buying new construction right now and this is exactly why same thing holds true for the average price again I don't focus too heavily on the average I think the median is a better metric but the average went down 2.1% for new construction and up 3.5% for previous owned if you wanna know what those numbers are the previous owner is 431,000 in change new construction 358,000 in change again those are the averages the medians were 3:30 and 3:06 respectively now with regard to let's look at some of these other numbers here and sorry zoom is acting annoying for me and blocking my ability to there we go sometimes you got to love technology sometimes it drives you crazy so when we're talking about new listings here is again new construction is the story new construction new listings up 18.1% year over year now new construction listings still make only a fraction of overall inventory and overall new listings so only 808 new listings total that being said and I just realized I need to turn off my notifications on my computer here and I'll do that to my phone as well got to love those rookie mistakes new construction only makes up a small a small fragment of total inventory just in general and so that increase of of 18% sounds like a huge increase it's not quite as big as you would expect so February of 2025 had 684 new listings for new construction and then it was 808 for February of 2026 so again not a huge increase in terms of total units but new construction is driving a lot of that previously owned only saw a 1.6% increase total and so again for the take that all I don't want to say with a grain of salt but just understand that new construction is driving so much of this right now let's see here average days to close not a whole lot interesting there inventory and I was gonna say before with regard to new listings is that of course new construction a lot of new construction is not listed in the multiple Listing service when builders start listing and using the multiple listing service it's because their inventory is not moving right that's typically when they start utilizing you know resources like the MLS a lot more so we have with regard to homes for sale again new construction inventory was up 30.9% previously owned inventory up 32.5% so pretty close there with regard to pending sales those were down in both categories so previously owned homes were down 5.4% for the month new construction was down 3.5% closed sales previously owned was down 14.1% and new construction is actually up 1.4% so in terms of closings actually new construction actually saved it from being an even worse number than it would have been month supply of inventory again new construction is pulling that number higher it's making month supply seem higher than it really is new construction is at 4.2 months previously owned is only at 3.5 months and this is why I keep saying that the number you know that the months of inventory I think around 4 is you know between 4 and 4.5 is the number at which it's gonna really start to feel like a buyer's market because new construction is playing such a huge role in all of this and bringing there's a lot more new construction supply than we normally would have seen last thing that I'll show you simply because I've got to move this out of the way last thing I'll show you simply because I this is not something that we get to see in the monthly indicators that GGR provides for us but how many showings it takes until a home goes pending right until a home goes under contract for new construction 4 showings for existing homes eight showings okay so on that's your median your average is 10.9 showings for previously owned and 7.1 for new for new construction now the median those were flat year over year the average the previously previously owned actually came down so in February of 2025 it took 11.9 showings on average to pend and in February of this year 10.9 so it went down an entire showing which is interesting new construction however increased 7.6% now showings per listing I this is actually one of my favorite things in all of this how many showings are we getting per listing for the month and this really tells us the trajectory of the market right is there more buyer activity or less buyer activity on listings that are out there and again remember if we have supply there's a few ways that we can measure whether supply is growing faster than demand or vice versa one of those is just to look at the months supply of inventory but this is also a very interesting measure of it and and so we can actually look at this and see that showings were down 10.6% year over year on previously owned homes and down 16.7% on new construction for the year that's a total 11.1% decrease in showings that's huge that is a huge decrease on average February of last year between all construction types average 4.5 showings per listing and now it's down to 4 we're we are losing half a showing per month on on homes that are out there again showing us that the that the seller's market is softening the market is softening if you're a seller you need to be prepared for that you need to to understand what this means for you for your listing how important it is to have the right marketing strategy I just did an episode on that where we talked about selling a home in Greenville what that entails what you need to do in order to sell your home and so make sure that you listen to that there's a lot of good information in there I talk a lot about my own strategy and I think you guys will find that to be interesting but that's it for today's episode we'll continue obviously to track all of this data each month cause it's very at least for me it's very very interesting to see where the markets going and you know of course if mortgage rates keep going up we will definitely find ourselves in a buyer's market there is no question about that at this point if mortgage rates go up further from where they are right now I said last week we don't really want to see them go above 6.3% they're in the six point fours now and so here we go buckle up we're in for an interesting ride and honestly by the time this show comes out mortgage rates will probably not be at 6.4 they'll probably be either a good bit higher or perhaps a good bit lower who knows it could go in any direction right now there's so many things in in the cards right now I don't I'm not willing to make a prediction cause again the only environment where I can't like really make a prediction is when there's a global catastrophe happening and that's what exactly what we have happening right now so thank you guys so much for listening my contact information is in the show notes if you need a realtor for any of your real estate needs in the Greenville area please like rate review subscribe to the show we will talk to you guys again next time!