Wilmington Area Fail-To-Sell Rates Tick Up

0:00Welcome to Real Stories with Buddy Blake. Today's episode features real estate insights from Buddy Blake. Let's dive in. Morning!

0:14Morning! Grab your coffee, everybody, because it's Monday and that means Buddy's here with the numbers. Buddy, good to see you.

0:21Hey, good to be here. Yeah, we got a full plate this week, all five counties, plus we're going to zoom in on New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender, and then Wilmington and Leland specifically. Okay, so let's just start broad.

0:36What's the overall picture across all five counties right now? So right now, there's 5,864 homes for sale across all five counties. 519 of those are new this week, and 2,501 are already under contract. Median asking price is landing around $410,000.

1:00Wow, that's a lot of homes on the market. So there's real inventory out there right now. There really is. And it breaks down differently depending on where you look.

1:11New Hanover's got 1,315 active listings, median asking around $521,000. Brunswick's the biggest by far, 2,644 for sale, median asking $411,000. And Pender's got 479 homes on the market, median asking $520,000. Interesting, Pender's asking prices are right up there with New Hanover, even though it's a much smaller market.

1:37Yeah, it kind of surprises people. And then if we zoom into Wilmington and Leland specifically, Wilmington's got 968 homes for sale, 92 new this week, median asking $459,000. Leland's a smaller pool, 473 for sale, median asking $415,000.

2:01Okay, so that's the snapshot of what's on the market right now. Let's talk about what actually happened over the last year. How are homes actually selling? So across all five counties, the median sold price over the last 12 months was $374,000, with a true days on market of 40 days.

2:22And here's the good part, homes sold for 97.4% of their first asking price. That's really strong, honestly. Buyers are paying almost full price. They are, if the home's priced right from day one.

2:39That's the key phrase there, from day one. Okay, I feel like there's a but coming. There is. 23% of listings across the region failed to sell last year, meaning they expired, got withdrawn, or got canceled.

2:53That's up from 21% the year before. Wait, so almost a quarter of listings just didn't sell at all? Right, and it's worse in some counties. New Hanover went from 23% up to 26%.

3:07Pender jumped the most, 18% up to 24%. Brunswick went from 22 to 24. Wilmington's sitting at 23, Leland at 21, and honestly, even those two, which have solid sale-to-ask numbers, still saw more listings die on the vine than the year before.

3:25So what does that actually tell you as an agent looking at this? It tells me there's not much middle ground left. Homes priced and prepped right are selling close to asking in about a month. Homes that aren't priced right are just sitting there till the listing dies.

3:42There's no in-between anymore where an overpriced house just eventually finds its buyer. That doesn't really happen much now. That's a real wake-up call for anyone thinking about listing and just kind of testing a high number to see what happens.

3:57Exactly. This is not the market to guess on price and hope buyers come around. You gotta get it right the first time because you may not get a second shot at fresh eyes on that listing.

4:10Okay, let's flip it. What does all this mean if you're a buyer right now? For buyers, honestly, there's real inventory to work with. 5,864 homes for sale, 519 new ones just this week.

4:26If you're patient and you know where to look, there's choices out there. And I imagine the mortgage rate plays into how far that money goes. It does. Freddie Mac's 30-year fixed average was sitting at 6.95% as of September 17th.

4:42That changes what your monthly payment looks like on any of these median prices. So run your own numbers before you fall in love with a house. That's smart advice. What about days on market?

4:54Does that vary a lot by county for buyers who might want more room to negotiate? It varies quite a bit, actually. Wilmington's moving fast, true 27 days. New Hanover overall is 30, Pender's 38.

5:07But Brunswick County is running 56 days and Leland's at 51. So if you're not in a rush, there might be more room to negotiate in those two areas, especially on anything that's been sitting a while. Good to know.

5:21So if you had to point to one thing everybody listening should really pay attention to this week, what is it? Watch that fail to sell rate. It moved up in every single area I track.

5:32New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender, Wilmington, Leland, all of it. When a quarter of listings in a county are expiring or getting pulled without selling, that's not a random blip. That's a signal a lot of sellers are overpricing, underpreparing, or both.

5:49So if somebody's gearing up to list their home, what should they actually be asking their agent? Ask hard questions about how they plan to avoid you becoming part of that statistic. Pricing, prep, the whole strategy.

6:05Don't just take a number and hope. This was such a good rundown, buddy. Anything else you want folks to know before we wrap up? Just that if you want to talk through what these numbers mean for your specific street or your specific plans, give me a call or text at 910-395-1000.

6:26Happy to walk through it, no pressure, just straight answers. Love that. And we've got the full article linked in the show notes if you want to go back and look at all these numbers yourself.

6:37Thanks so much for breaking it all down. Thanks for having me. Talk to you next Monday. Thanks for listening to Real Stories with Buddy Blake.

6:46For the full article and more, check the show notes. See you next time.