October home sales suffer through floods, other factors

The worst floods in South Carolina history helped cause a drop in home sales in October from the same month in 2014.

In Columbia, pending home sales for the month were down nearly 12 percent over October sales a year ago, according to a report released Tuesday by the S.C. Realtors trade group. But that pales in comparison to the sales drop recorded a year ago. Pending sales – a count of properties on which an offer has been made in a given month – dropped by nearly 42 percent in October 2014 — when Columbia-area weather was fall-like — from the previous year.

Statewide, pending home sales fell last month by 10.3 percent. However, home sales in 2015 have trended upward all year, rising by double digits in each of the last 11 months until September, when sales rose by just 4.2 percent over the previous year.

“We expected the numbers to look different this month,” said Nick Kremydas, South Carolina Realtors CEO. “As we’ve settled into a more normal real estate market, I expect to see these ebbs on a more seasonal basis going forward. October also saw natural disasters that we’ve never seen. That definitely... impacted the market.”

New home sale listings were also down last month, falling by 6.8 percent over a year ago. Also, the supply of homes fell by 17.3 percent to just a 6.2-month supply, indicating the S.C. housing market is back to the six-month stock supply that most experts consider to be balanced between supply and demand.

Median prices, meanwhile, rose last month in Columbia by 6.8 percent, to $156,176, while statewide median sale prices rose 7.3 percent to $173,000, the report stated.

“There are many variables at play right now,” Kremydas said, though the floods’ impact cannot be dismissed.

“During the flooding, when everybody was getting their feet back on the ground and realizing what listings were flooded, what listings weren’t, we missed about two weeks out of that month,” said Morris Lyles, president of the Central Carolina Realtors Association.

Headquartered in Columbia, the association has about 1,200 members and affiliates covering territory from Fort Mill in York County to Aiken, Orangeburg and Kershaw counties. Columbia’s 11.9 percent October sales drop has be viewed as “a glass half full,” Lyles said, because so many factors were at work and the market was not off by more.

“We missed two weeks, but we also had a situation where appraisers had to go back out and re-inspect any property (that was under contract as of Oct. 2) because we were declared a disaster area. That changed the whole process and delayed it a little bit,” Lyles said.

Lots of properties were destroyed or severely damaged in the flood, and the re-inspections prevented the closings on some properties, Kremydas said.

But, “We’re optimistic we are going to end the year on a very high note,” he said. “I think this is going to be a record year for sales, and going into 2016, I don’t see that trend changing.”