Spring and early summer are usually the best times of year to try to sell your home.
But for hundreds of homeowners in the Fayetteville market, the buyers haven’t come.
The number of homes sold in June was the lowest in 10 years, according to Multiple Listing Service figures.
A total of 442 new and existing homes sold last month, compared with 617 closings in June 2011. The market is weakest for existing homes – only 281 sold last month in a territory that includes Cumberland and several surrounding counties. The last time so few existing homes sold was June 2000, long before the development boom brought on by the wartime buildup at Fort Bragg.
For years, Fayetteville’s real estate market has fended off the volatility of other markets because of the steady employment and payroll from Fort Bragg. Spring and summer are usually when most homes sell because many soldiers receive reassignment orders and relocate by summer’s end.
But some military families moving here are coming from weaker markets where they can’t sell their homes.
“Once they get here and start looking, they realize they need to rent,” said real estate agent Libba Pate of Coldwell Banker Advantage.
Pate cites the still-sputtering economy as an underlying factor.
“The ups and downs of real estate are hard to figure sometimes,” she said. “June has usually been a very good month. April to June are when I always have the best months.”
Judy Capps of Townsend Real Estate says people who don’t have to buy now are hesitant to do so.
“I’m seeing a few upscale buyers in the military who want to rent for a year,” Capps said. “Then they’ll buy or decide if they want to buy. I think a lot of people are renting.”
The Multiple Listing Service numbers, compiled by the Fayetteville Regional Association of Realtors, show 281 existing homes sold in June for an average price of $154,220. The sales were up from April and May, but every month so far this year has been well below last year’s volume.
A total of 161 new homes sold in June at an average of $215,514. For the first six months of the year, new home sales are down 13 percent from 2011.
Still, builders are not dealing with a glut of empty homes awaiting buyers. They’ve been keeping pace with demand, holding their inventory levels at a six-month supply – the benchmark for a healthy market. And nationally, construction is showing signs of improvement as builders in June broke ground on the most homes in four years, a report this week said.
In contrast, the number of existing homes listed for sale in the Fayetteville market is more than double what’s considered healthy. About 1,670 homes are listed in the $100,000s; only 1,434 such homes sold in the past 12 months. Nearly 550 homes are listed in the $200,000s, much more than the 356 that sold in the past year.
“For every house sold in June, about four new listings showed up,” said David Evans of Manning Realty, a former president of the Realtors association. “There’s no way to keep up with that increase in inventory.”
The large number of existing homes on the market is what worries Zan Monroe, not the number of sales in June.
“That’s more disturbing,” said Monroe, executive vice president of the Realtors association. “There’s a large volume of houses out there that are not selling and not going to sell. The only homes selling are absolutely the best value on the market. We have lots of people trying to sell their houses, and they have them overpriced.
“Would we like the market to be busier? Of course,” he said. “It is what it is. … What we always struggle to do is read the market and explain to people what is going on.”
An analysis of market data for June shows that roughly two-thirds of existing home sales were in Cumberland County. The Terry Sanford High School district had the most sales – 28 homes – followed closely by Seventy-First with 27 and Westover with 25.
Jack Britt had 19 existing home sales last month, but the rapidly developing district was No. 1 for new homes with 16 closings.
New construction is appealing to many buyers in this market, especially when the homes are priced cheaper per square than many established neighborhoods, according to Multiple Listing Service data.
“The new construction homes are satisfying buyers’ demands better than the resale market,” Monroe said. “They’re offering more house for less money, and it’s brand new. It’s hurting the resale market. It would be like trying to sell a used Cadillac when you can buy a new one cheaper.”
In his 30 years in the business, Monroe said, he has seen four occasions where people could buy new homes cheaper than existing properties in the market. “It’ll last as long as it’ll last,” he said. “That’s what’s hurting the resale market.”
Over the first quarter of 2012, housing prices in Fayetteville dropped on an annualized basis of 1.8 percent, said Mike Walden, an economist and professor at N.C. State University. He attributed the data to the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Over the most recent quarter, he said, housing prices in Fayetteville edged downward whereas prices were flat overall in the state. However, housing prices in Fayetteville over the past year seem to have held better than statewide.
“So that is telling me there’s a little more strength or has been in the Fayetteville housing market than in the state. Nationally, economists are cautiously optimistic about the housing market. It looks as if the prices have stopped declining. Sales have been edging up.
“We’re certainly nowhere near what we were pre-recession,” Walden said. “We’ll probably never get back to that kind of very robust market. We’re cautiously optimistic that the bottom may have been reached in the housing market.”
Pate, the agent for Coldwell Banker Advantage, has sold homes for 22 years in the Fayetteville area.
“I don’t see how Fayetteville could do anything but sell real estate,” she said. “We’re so fortunate to have Fort Bragg. I don’t see where it’s going to be real bad in Fayetteville.”
Staff writer Michael Futch can be reached at futchm@fayobserver.com or 486-3529.