Greenville Market Heats Up

In May 2013, real estate portal Trulia noticed the housing market heating up and created a national Bubble Watch.

Jed Kolko, chief economist for Trulia, said he just wanted to know if home prices are over or undervalued. “The more prices are overvalued relative to fundamentals, the closer we are to a housing bubble,” he says, “and the bigger the risk of a coming price crash.

Using pricetoincome ratios, pricetorent ratios and prices relative to their long term trends, Kolko estimates that home prices nationwide are four percent undervalued in Q4 2013.

By that measure, Greater Greenville is not in a bubble, despite a healthy increase in home prices yeartodate. In fact, our metro is four percent below its fundamentals.

Between January and October 31, 2013, Upstate housing sales soared 25.8 percent. Median sold prices yearoveryear rose 4.7 percent, from $150,000 to $157,000.

Greater Greenville also had a terrific October. At 721 units, housing sales volume was 13.4 percent higher than the 636 units sold in 2012. October median home prices were over 5 percent higher than the year before.

Homes closed quickly in October, with one of the lowest days on market in years at 88 days. That is the length of time it takes to sell a home from the day it’s listed by the selling agent in the local multiple listing service to the day the home closes escrow.

As of November 10, the median price of the homes for sale in Greater Greenville is $187,040, which is 4.5 percent higher than the same period a year ago.

For the first time since 2008, home prices are back where they were before the Great recession when the median price was $153,724.

It’s a great time to buy a home!