Durham Housing Stats For May
It’s that time of month again, and the news this month looks a lot better than the last couple of months. Let’s dive right in. As always, data was pulled from the Triangle Multiple Listing Service at about 10:30PM last night.
In Durham County there were 2,107 available listings at the end of May. 261 sales were completed in May meaning the current home inventory would be sold in 8.1 months. This is an improvement of 3.5 months, which makes the improvement over the last three months a whopping 6.8 months. Anything between 6 and 8 months is normally considered a balanced market, so the county market as a whole is vastly improving
For the 27713 zip code there were 464 homes available on May 31. 73 sales were completed in May leaving 6.4 months of inventory available. This is half the inventory available last month.
In both cases it is worth noting that the improvement is driven by large increases in the number of closings. That is to be expected. Normally, however, the rise in closings is accompanied by a rise in listings, so things are close to balancing out. I’m certainly not complaining.
Now let’s take a look at our favorite communities
- Hope Valley Farms continued to be the sales leader with 16 closings in May – more than double April’s 7 closings. There are 60 homes available [up 1 from April], making the absorption rate 3.8 months. That is normally a seller’s market. The average sales price for homes sold in Hope Valley Farms is just over $214,000.
- By raw sales numbers, second place goes to Woodcroft. 13 homes sold in Woodcroft last month for an average price of just under $135,000. With 65 listings currently active, that makes the absorption rate 5.0 months, again a seller’s market in Woodcroft
- Woodlake had another strong month with three sales closing in May for an average price of just under $214,000. 14 homes are currently available meaning there is 4.7 months of inventory. I said that last months 3.4 months of inventory might have been a fluke — I may have been wrong.
- Parkwood had 3 home sales close in May. 27 homes were for sale at the end of May at an average price of just under $135,000. This makes the absorption rate 9.0 months. While this is still a sellers market, the numbers are much better than April’s 1 sale and 24 listings
- Penrith also had 3 sales in May with an average price of $163,500. Penrith had 6 listings available at the end of May for an absorption rate of 2.0 months
To be fair, this is only one month of good news for many communities [except for Woodlake, which shows a lot of resiliency]. Still, I have to admit it was fun to write seller’s market as many times as I did, and I skipped a couple of opportunities. With the continued availability of the $8,000 tax credit, I expect to see continued strength in the “starter home” communities such as Penrith, Parkwood and parts of Woodcroft through out the summer. It’s too early to say we’ve turned a corner, but I think we can see the corner from here.
Tags: housing stats
