Real Estate in Durham with Sidetrips to Chapel Hill and elsewhere in the Triangle
If you have seen any national housing news, you know February was a rough month for housing in the US. We’ve also looked at the local housing numbers and, while we saw some reason to hope, they weren’t so rosy either. Earlier this week, the Triangle Multiple Listing Service posted the “official” figures for the Triangle’s counties for February 2011.
Here’s the numbers for our local counties
One of Durham’s iconic restaurants closed its doors last Friday as Dillard’s BBQ ended a 58 year run last Friday. In several interviews, Wilma Dillard indicated that the economy forced her decision to close the Fayetteville Road institution. Dillard’s was the second oldest Bar-B-Q restaurant in the Bull City having opened a year after the venerable Bullock’s
Bull City Rising has an excellent interview with Wilma Dillard and many of her customers where Dillard talks both about the restaurant and what she hopes will be in her future. Go read it — I couldn’t say it better.
With the nice weather this week, most of our flowers and shrubs have started to sprout. Did February bring the same kind of promising shoots as my shrubbery? Well, yes, but not in the way you might think. Let’s take a look at the numbers.
For all of Durham County there were 2,186 homes listed for sale at the end of February – an increase of 5%. 136 sales closed in February, an drop of almost 13%. Using February figures, it would take 16.1 months to work through our current inventory which is an increase of 2.8 months.
In South Durham (*) 848 homes were listed for sale at the end of February – an increase of 14%. 37 sales closed in February, a drop of 22% from February numbers. It would take 22.9 Februarys to work our way through all the available homes, an increase of 7.1 months.
February showed a second month of decline in houses sold. Some of this is expected, since February is a short month. Still, the drop in South Durham sales is something we should pay special attention to in the coming months.
This month’s figures also show one of the weaknesses in looking at adsorption rate. Buyers and sellers both entered the market in February. When a seller enters the market, you see it immediately as there is an active listing. When a buyer enters the market, however, there is a delay of 2-3 months as the buyer finds a new property and the transaction works its way to closing. So when the market recovers, one might expect the adsorption rate to spike a bit as sellers enter the market, then drop as the buyers “catch up.” It’s far too early to
predict that here, but we shouldn’t panic about those scary high adsorption rates either.
Here’s the updated neighborhood information, with some of our new neighborhoods.
| Total Available Listings | Total Closed Sales | Adsorption Rate [in months] | Avg Sale Price | |
| Woodcroft | 76 | 2 | 38.0 [+16.7] | $165,500 97% of list price |
| Hope Valley Farms | 72 | 3 | 24.0 [+12.8] | $126,867 91% of list price |
| Woodlake | 25 | 2 | 12.5 | 155,750 97% of list price |
| Parkwood | 30 | 0 | N/A | N/A |
| Chancellors Ridge | 22 | 0 | N/A | N/A |
| Grandale | 6 | 1 | 6.0 [-1.0] | $330,000 100% of list price |
| Audubon Park | 11 | 0 | N/A | N/A |
| The Hills at Southpoint | 5 | 2 | 2.5 [+1.5] | $466,990 100% of list price |
As we noted above, many new listings came on the market this month — Woodcroft +12, Hope Valley Farms +16, Woodlake +11, Chancellor’s Ridge +7 — and that is pushing adsorption rates through the roof. It will take another month or two before the buyers who came out in February translate into closed sales.
(*) We’re defining “south Durham” as an area in the southern part of Durham County with roughly the following borders: Starting with the North – Cornwallis Road between 15-501 and NC55. NC55 up to Riddle Road and Riddle/Ellis over to the Durham Freeway. Then, the Durham Freeway down to the county line. West along the Durham/Chatham line, then north along the Durham/Orange line to 15-501. follow 15-501 to Cornwallis Road to complete the circle. If you are a local MLS geek, that is MLS areas 100 through 106 plus area 107A.
