We know that January and February were rough real estate months in Durham. I’ve predicted that March would be when we turned the corner. Let’s see if I’m right.

For all of Durham County there were 2,435 homes listed for sale at the end of March – an increase of almost 20%. 216 sales closed in March, which doubles the closings in February. That means that it would take 11.3 months like March to work through the current housing inventory. This brings us back much closer to a stable market — remember the rates for January and February were well into the teens – but we’re not quite there yet.

For the 27713 zip code there were 539 homes listed at the end of March – another 30% increase in listings. 50 homes sold during March, more than doubling sales in February. The combination of increased listings and increased closings puts the adsorption rate at 10.8 months — exactly half of the February total.

It’s worth noting again the staggering increase in total listings every month this year. Let’s put those numbers next to each other [county wide listings/27713 listings]

• July: 2,046/427
• December 1,774/286
• January: 1,896/335
• February: 2,070/410
• March: 2,435/539

So in February we already matched the inventory from the height of last summer, and March posted significant gains in both areas. Sales are there, so once we burn through the new listings flooding the market, things look promising. It’s certainly possible
that the jump in listings relates to the timing of the Federal tax credit — we’ll see how true that is over the next two months.

Here’s a look at the communities we’re tracking. If you would like to see data from your community, please let us know in the comments.

[As a side note, there are a lot of subdivisions with one listing. 82 different subdivisions in the 27713 area code have at least one listing]

As you can see, the rebound is uneven. Woodcroft and Parkwood, for example, have shown quite a rebound while Hope Valley Farms is still in the doldrums. I can’t believe, however, that will be a long term trend

Watch for the effects of the Federal tax credit to intensify over the next two months as buyers scramble to get a home under contract by the April 30 deadline. Expect to see the number of listings level off as it is almost too late to list now and sell before the credit expires. closings, however, will continue to rise through June, then level off for third quarter 2010.

Barry Ragin over at Dependable Erection pointed me to this neat Housing and Transportation Affordability map. It lets you peer into metropolitan areas and compare the traditional affordable housing areas [median home price less than 30% of median income] with their new index — housing plus transportation costs less than 45% of median income. It’s an interesting look at how commuting costs change the true cost of housing.

The site also have several maps looking at fuel costs, greenhouse gas emissions, total commuting time and just about any other factoid relating to housing and transportation. It’s worth taking a few minutes to play around with it.

The Jordan High School PTSA is having their annual Yard Sale fundraiser this Saturday, March 27 from 8AM to noon. The Jordan Yard Sale is usually pretty big with most of the parking lot filled with vendors selling just about anything you can imagine. I spend far too much there every year.

Jordan High School is on Garrett Road just off the intersection of Garrett and Hope Valley Road [NC-751]

[picture cred.: Creative Commons and Redlands CoC]

Earlier today, the National Association of Realtors released their Local Market Report for the Durham market covering the 4th Quarter of last year. There is a ton of information in the charts and graphs, but the executive summary is that the Durham market has been holding its own better than the national average, but the unemployment situation [which is worse than the national average] clouds any future projections. Go, take a look at the NAR figures and tell us what you think.

Yesterday, the Triangle Multiple Listing Service released its Market Update for February 2010. Before I give you the links, I want to pull some stats out of the Durham County report;

Feb10 Market Stats

Take a look at the year on year numbers for new listings and closed sales. That’s a 20+% increase in New Listings and an almost 20% decline in closed sales. That’s enough to put a crimp in anyone’s sales analysis.

Here’s the numbers for our local counties

• Entire Triangle Region
• Durham County
• Orange County
• Wake County

The weather is supposed to be quite nice this weekend, so it would be a great weekend to look at Open Houses! This Sunday from 3PM to 5PM I will be holding an Open House at 12 Innisfree Drive. This brick-front townhome is nestled in its own community right next to Hope Valley North. It’s right off University Drive, so it’s just minutes away from Southpoint Mall, Duke, UNC, downtown Durham and just about anywhere else you would want to go in South Durham!

This 1674 sq ft home has three bedrooms and three full baths and would be perfect for someone who wants the space of a detached home without all the exterior maintenance and lawn care. for more specific details, click here.

Again, I’ll be showing this home on Sunday from 3PM to 5PM. Girl Scout Cookies and milk will be available to lure y’all in. I hope to see you there!

From the City’s press release

The Durham Police Department is pleased to announce a cooperative arrangement with Bair Software Inc. to provide cutting-edge crime mapping to the public. The new web site, www.raidsonline.com is designed to be a Regional Analysis & Information Data Sharing solution. In addition to the City of Durham, which will provide daily updates for the site, Raleigh and Cary are expected to start sharing data soon, allowing the public to have a regional perspective of crime for the first time. Although the Durham Crime Mapper (www.durhampolice.com/crimemapper.cfm) will continue to be the official crime mapping web site for the department, data will also be shared for publication on the RAIDS web site. CrimeMapper will still be the preferred source for users wanting to view crime for years prior to 2009. However, the RAIDS web site will provide the following additional benefits:

• Ability to view all UCR Part 2 crimes
• Google Maps interface, including satellite views
• Analytics for selected crime search results
• Frequency distribution
• Crime by day of week
• Crime type timelines
• Temporal topology
• One-click density maps (aka hot spots)
• Citizens-On-Patrol notification feature

The public is reminded that crime mapping web sites like RAIDS are designed to better inform the public concerning crime in their neighborhood, and should not be used for statistical analysis or comparison with other cities. This is a pilot project with the site developer, and no warranties are offered regarding the accuracy or completeness of the data, including the continued availability of the service. The complete terms of use and blog regarding features can be found at http://raidsblog.com/.

I’ve had a chance to play with the software a bit, and it seems to be pretty robust. If you are interested in the crime rates around a particular property, this seems like an effective tool to get the information you want.

Last week, the Associated Press ran the following article — Pending Home Sales Fall 7.6 Percent in January. The article noted that home sales in January showed a drastic drop caused mainly by  . . . snow! They also noted that the tax credit, due to expire in the next few months, doesn’t have as strong an effect as it did last year, something I am reluctant to agree or disagree with.

The article also noted that the Federal Reserve will stop buying mortgage backed securities [MBS] at the end of the month. The Fed’s program has been one of the main factors in keeping interest rates low, so many analysts expect mortgage rates to rise in April.

Still, it’s good to see my own analyst hat fits well enough.

January was certainly the (real estate) winter of our discontent. Was February more of the same?

For all of Durham County there were 2,070 homes listed for sale at the end of February – an increase of almost 10%. 105 sales closed in February [a drop of about 10%] meaning that it would take 19.7 months of Februarys to work through the current housing inventory. This is a another big step backward from last month’s 16 months of inventory and again the highest total I’ve seen since I started tracking these numbers.

For the 27713 zip code there were 410 homes listed at the end of February – again an increase of close to 20%. Only 19 homes sold during February leaving the adsorption rate at 21.6 months — another 50% increase.

Here’s a look at the communities we’re tracking. If you would like to see data from your community, please let us know in the comments.

I still left the column for adsorption rate, but with sales numbers so small, it isn’t useful to calculate it.

Sales showed another drop for this month, but the real news is the stunning and continued increase in listings. The total number of homes on the market is already at mid-summer levels and it’s only March 1st. My guess is that savvy homeowners are trying to list their homes early in the season, so they can sell before the tax credit expires on April 30. Buyers, on the other hand, have been held back by the snow and [for us anyway] Arctic blasts of December and January. With listings going up and closed sales declining, adsorption rates skyrocket.

I can say, however, that I certainly talked to more people in February than I have in a long time, and most of the Realtors I’ve spoken to report the same thing. Of course, none of that is guaranteed to translate into March and April closings, but it is a sign of optimism.

Yesterday’s Herald Sun had an article discussing ways to balance the upcoming year’s City budget — Council Open to Raising Taxes. The article discussed the projected gap in next year’s budget, estimated by some to be about $13Million, and the need to deal with some deferred road maintenance to the tune of at least $1.5Million [dealing with all the deferred maintenance would be $19Million] . The Council is apparently looking to cover the shortfall with a combination of spending cuts and a property tax increase of as much as 5.8 cents per $100 — an 11% increase over current rates. The Council is also considering a bond issue to deal with the backlog of maintenance projects.

Some semi-random thoughts;

1. There will be a property tax increase this year. The Council wouldn’t be talking about it in February unless they were laying the groundwork for passing an increase later this year.
2. While they say they will use a mix of spending cuts and a tax increase, expect much fewer spending cuts and a larger tax increase. After all, when has any government really been successful at cutting spending? I’d be surprised if the rate increase wasn’t at least 4 cents per $100.
3. As a citizen, I’d be really concerned with the level of deferred road maintenance, and even moreso with the idea of taking on additional debt to take care of it. It’s just like your personal budget — if you have to add debt to cover your regular monthly expenses, you are living beyond your means.

It will be interesting to see how this develops over the next couple of months, There are two ideas here. First of all, we all know that raising taxes in a recession is bad. We also know, however, that the City must keep a certain level of funding to keep it’s AAA bond rating. When idea wins out will be come clearer when the official budget is unveiled later this year.