Charlotte Prices By Zip and Getting Rid of Meaningless Stats

The fundamentals within our market- our property valuations- are rock solid. Price appreciation, the main measure of strength, is up 5.1% in single families. Yet there are pockets that haven't done nearly so well, a few have lost ground, and we have 10 - 20% fewer buyers in the market, slowing the growth here for the first time in a decade, you'll see that in the coming zip code posts.

I'm changing format from some of my past market reports, hopefully getting to more meaningful information. We'll still have price appreciation, and units sold, but I'm leaving out Days On Market and %Sold To List numbers, because they just don't make much sense. In fact they are almost meaningless the way our MLS reports them.

I'd like to introduce two new indexes I've created to help get a handle on these two issues. The first is my ATS,(rhymes with Cats, or Fats, but not a_s!) or Asking to Selling, which is a measure of the average Listed cost per square foot, versus the he average Sold cost per square foot for the same period, same neighborhood. For example, in August, zip code 28270 has an ATS of 107.68, and that means Listed homes on the market in August were Listed at average prices per sf 107.68% of the average of solds for the same zip, same time... make sense? Said another way, the listing price is running 7.68% above the actual average sold price, now do you get it? You will see some ATS at around 100, others up to 130. Any guess as to which homes are selling better?

The second index attempts to answer how long the average property will stay on the market. I base this on Pending sales, versus Actives, those on the market. It is expressed in Months Inventory, obviously the smaller the number the better. This index will give you an idea of how many months inventory there is on hand if sales remain at current levels... I know, I know, fall sales will be lower, but still, it may be the best measure we can get out of the available statistics. Some people would add the Pending and Sold to determine Inventory, but to me that counts the Pending sale twice.

So why doesn't the MLS Days on Market count? Simple, when the listing expires without selling, if it is re-listed a day later... Presto- like magic its a new listing and Days on Market is One (1) again. How about our vaunted 97% sales to list average? That's bogus too-- it has no relation to the original list price of the property, it is 97% of the last listed price- that could be thousands, or 10's of thousands off the original price. Insert Days on Market and Sales as a % Sold? Here:
I'll explain more in another post-- why these numbers aren't just meaningless, they're frequently deceptive and dangerous in the wrong hands. The Zip Code reports are on the way, the good,the bad and the ugly- a couple very ugly.