The preliminary numbers for April 2011 are in and it appears that the market is slowing compared to last year. While the final numbers won’t be in until after May 15 (Realtors are notoriously lazy about recording their sales in the MLS), taking a look now gives an idea of which way the market is trending.

Between April 1 and April 29, 2011, there were 146 single family homes sold in New Hanover County. As a comparison, there were 155 single family homes sold between March 1 and March 29, 2011. For the entire month of March 2011, there were 177 homes sold, so we can probably expect another 15-20 sales to be recorded for the month of April, bringing the total number of single family home sales for April 2011 to between 160 and 170.

Compare this to the 242 single family homes sold in April 2010 and there is a strong reason to believe that the Wilmington NC Real Estate Market is slowing. I’ll take another look as on May 15 and we’ll find out the actual numbers for April 2011. All of this data is pulled from the Wilmington Regional Association of Realtors MLS.

On a side note, please be on the lookout next week as I’m going to begin my luxury home pick of the week!

Until my oldest son, Caleb (now 7) said, “Dad, I want to play T Ball,” I had no clue that Wilmington, NC is such a great baseball town. Now, two years later, Caleb and my youngest son Oran are both playing in the Supper Optimist League- Caleb is playing machine pitch, Oran is playing T Ball. Supper Optimist is one of several youth leagues in Wilmington. Since 2009, I’ve gotten to know a little bit about the various baseball programs available here and want to pass on that knowledge to those of you that are baseball fans, those that are parents and anyone generally curious about what life in Wilmington is like.

While Wilmington is probably most famous for being the hometown of Michael Jordan, it actually has a huge baseball presence as well. There are a good number of former and retired pros including Trot Nixon, of Red Sox Fame, and Fletcher Bates who now owns and operates Coastal Athletics. Incidentally, Trot and Fletcher both graduated from New Hanover High School. In fact, Willie Stargell actually lived out the last years of his life here in Wilmington before passing away in 2001 and each year his foundation hosts the Willie Stargell Celebrity Golf Tournament.

If you are interested in getting your kids involved in baseball, there are youth baseball programs offered through the Supper Optimist Club, the Optimist Club of Winter Park, Cape Fear Optimist Club, and the Myrtle Grove Optimist Club. Additionally, the Wilmington Seahawks organizes youth travel teams. So, if you love baseball, Wilmington is a good place to be!

And on a final note, a shout out to Caleb- his team won tonight 14-2 and he went 3 for 3 against the machine. Not bad for his 2nd game of machine pitch!

Happy Spring! Since we are through the first quarter, now is a great time to take a look at the performance of the Wilmington, NC real estate market. At this point, the questions I get about the real estate market from people with whom I speak are: “is it turning around?” “Is it getting better?” Well, let’s tackle those head on! We’ll go through some big picture historical data, some more narrowly focused data and draw a few conclusions from that to paint a picture of where we are headed.

Historically across the country (and here in Wilmington as well), the average appreciation each year has been 4%. This has been true 30 or 40 years. I tested this on the Wilmington NC real estate market by creating the graph immediately below this paragraph. I could only get average sales price data as far back as 1996 (as represented by the blue line). The green line represents what 4% appreciation would have looked like, starting at the average price in 1996. Ever heard of the real estate bubble? Well, you can see it pretty clearly here where the blue line (average price) departs sharply from the green line (4% curve) starting in about 2004.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying “what comes up must go down.” Well, as you can see in 2007, the average sales price started to come down, and come down hard. At the end of 2009, we actually got back to the average price that we should have been at based on 4% appreciation (or about $232,000). Unfortunately, the law of averages says that the size of the bubble below the line is going to have to be about the same as the size above the line. The short answer here is that, in the BEST CASE, prices will stay the same for the foreseeable future.

So what about the first quarter? Well, here are the cold hard numbers compared to last year:

As you can see, the average sales price continues to drop in Wilmington real estate market. There is also good news in these numbers! From 2007-2009, all of the key numbers were plummeting. The fact that the two of them appear to be increasing is great news because it indicates that the market is beginning to recover.

What does all this mean? For sellers, this means that the best price that they can get is the price that they can get today. For buyers, it means that they should plan to hold their home for more than 7 years. Truthfully, purchasing real estate with plans to hold it for less than 7 years is considered speculation by professionals. All in all the market has stabilized a bit. In this Realtors opinion, the average home price in Wilmington, NC will probably stay under $225,000 this year. Please stay tuned for more posts about how to best deal with this market as a buyer and as a seller. I would love to hear your comments!