Flashbacks…

[smfj]

I am now officially a former San Diegan and Charlotte, NC resident of two weeks. I’m anxious to share some of my observations on the market here, but since there’s no Charlotte Piggington, figured I’d post them here- at least Cow_tipping might be interested.

My observations are pretty much purely anecdotal and confined to the “uptown” (Charlotte-speak for downtown) area, but I feel like I am in 2005 San Diego.

(1) Uptown condo market exploding. New project announced daily, each with a higher price point than the last.
(2) Constantly hearing, “It’s different here. Everyone wants to live in Charlotte.”
(3) Flippers- I’ve heard a lot of “we have ways of deterring flippers,” yet, I visited one condo building the other day where literally 90% of the condos were on lockbox, either for rent or for flip. Combine that with the number of condos listed for rent at ridiculous cover-the-mortgage-don’t-worry-about-the-market prices, and I just don’t buy it.

On one hand, the population of Charlotte is growing ridiculously fast. It does seem that a lot of people want to live here. But when those people can’t sell their home in NY/CA/etc, there will be a trickle down effect on Charlotte. I think we’re just behind the curve here.

(Interesting to note- the most recent C-S index has Charlotte prices as flat; it was the only market that went up in the prior report).

[gn]

“On one hand, the population of Charlotte is growing ridiculously fast.”

Does most of the influx to Charlotte come from California ?

[surveyor]

pop shift

From what I’ve researched, a lot of California investor money is going to Charlotte, but a lot of the influx of people in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia are those people who were heading to Florida but decided Florida was too expensive.

They call them “halfbacks” apparently.

[Cow_tipping]

Yes, welcome to the insanity. I got some tips about various things in the area. So ask away and you’ll get it. Fixing cars or doing stuff to cars/bikes is my speciality
Now to housing. Yes we are furiously inflating the bubble here.
2 years ago, nothing in charlotte was over 200K. Now, there is nothing under 350K. I am talking SFR though. So like 175% appreciation … booya.
Yes there is that same rhetoric, “everyone wants to live here”, “its a sellers market”, all the same crap.
The half backs are for real. But, they are a pitiful trickle, they are heading to western NC more than charlotte and South carolina (york and lancaster counties)is much better than NC on all counts except home schooling. They got some arcane laws for that.
Also the new flavor is … well the same as the old flavor “the 485 flavor” where that goes, the developers run drooling like a 14 year old boy after a supermodel.
If you spend under 200K on a 3K sqft house, more than likely you’ll not lose your shirt. Under 3000 sqft – well we call them apartments. Rent but do not buy.
Cool.
Cow_tipping.

[Cow_tipping]

“On one hand, the population
Submitted by gn on May 9, 2007 – 11:52am.
“On one hand, the population of Charlotte is growing ridiculously fast.”

Does most of the influx to Charlotte come from California ?

Not quite.
My first guess is mexico.
Second is NY/NJ.
Of late its been Ohio as well.
Then maybe CA.
Then maybe florida.
This region apparently as per some of the city planners is going to grow from 1.5 million in 2005 to 4.5 million in 2020. None of those 3 million people will be documented in any census nor will they speak english. So we are ordering every road sign in spanish. That’s why the city planners need so much money.
Cool.
Cow_tipping.

[4plexowner]

I was at a meeting recently where a CCDC (Center City Devlpmt Corp – quasi-govt agency being used to rape the taxpayers of San Diego – no wait, I mean a quasi-govt agency being used to facilitate the rebuilding of downtown) representative was saying that there will be 90K residents downtown by 2020 (currently 30K supposedly)

I assume they are referring to homeless people living in cardboard boxes because there sure as hell won’t be 90K people living in $700K condos

It amuses me to see the ‘official’ projections of rising population (which are used to justify stupid projects at the taxpayer’s expense) when other data shows a net out-migration of just the people that these projections say should be coming into the area

[smfj]

And on this subject…

Wall Street Journal

Where Home Prices Are Hot Now
Despite a National Downturn, Some Markets That Missed
The Housing Boom Are Thriving; Fleeing Florida for Charlotte
By DEAN TREFTZ
May 9, 2007; Page D1

The housing news isn’t all grim. Even as prices sag nationwide, there are several cities in the country where home values are climbing smartly.

Portland, Ore., Boise, Idaho, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Houston, Austin, and Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C., are among the cities bucking the national trend. Homes’ appreciation there between the fourth quarters of 2005 and 2006 far exceeded the national average of 5.9%, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. In some markets, like Boise and Seattle, the appreciation jumped well into the double digits.

“All real estate is local, despite the headlines,” says Lawrence Yun, the senior economist for the National Association of Realtors. Nationwide, the median existing-home price fell 1.3%, to $212,800 in February from $215,700 in February 2006, according to preliminary NAR statistics.

There’s no single secret of these cities’ apparent success, but many of them missed the housing boom of the past five years. From 2001 to 2005, annual appreciation in these cities was between 2% and 5%, far slower than the 7% to 12% national average, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. (OFHEO calculates appreciation based on repeat sales or refinancings of the same single-family properties.) Now, prices are playing catch-up.

Most of the cities also have one or more strong industries to drive their economies — colleges and technology in Raleigh, banks in Charlotte, energy in Houston and aerospace in Seattle. And all have education levels above the national average.

These cities emerged from the last recession later than most of the country for various reasons, including the lagging technology, aviation and energy industries, says Mark Zandi, CEO of Moody’s Economy.com. Now, their economies are strong and housing prices are still perceived as affordable, luring buyers into the market. For instance, the median sales price for a single-family home in the area of Austin-Round Rock, Texas, is $173,700, according to the National Association of Realtors, compared with $371,200 in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach area.

So many Northeasterners who moved to Florida have resettled in the Charlotte area in recent years — both workers and retirees — that Henry Scala and others in Charlotte refer to them as “halfbacks.”

The influx may have helped Mr. Scala when he moved across town in January. “I was faced with selling this house in theoretically a down market,” the 36-year resident of Charlotte says. “But there was no down market in Charlotte.” Charlotte-area house prices grew 9.09% from the fourth quarter of 2005 to the fourth quarter of 2006 — the fastest appreciation the metro area has seen since 1982, according to OFHEO. Mr. Scala got his $800,000 asking price in four days.

Today’s declining prices nationwide are in part the result of an earlier explosion of short-term investors in Florida, California and other booming markets. Recently, both investors and long-term homeowners have been cashing in or cutting losses in formerly hot markets and settling in areas that avoided the boom, such as the Carolinas, parts of Georgia and Tennessee, areas of Texas, the Western mountain states and the Pacific Northwest.

“We’re cutting and running,” jokes Mark Hoover, 47 years old. Mr. Hoover and his wife, Melissa, 35, are both in the mortgage business, and they are moving from Florida to Austin to work for PRO-30, a mortgage lender based in Novato, Calif. But the Hoovers’ move hasn’t been easy. Their vacation home in Wellington, Fla., near West Palm Beach, has been on the market since October with a price tag of about $900,000, and their $1 million-to-$1.5 million primary home outside Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has sat since February.

Now, the Hoovers are ready for stable, low-cost, “homey” Austin, where houses appreciated at a steady 6.7% annual rate between the fourth quarters of 2004 and 2005, even as Fort Lauderdale’s prices skyrocketed more than 30% before dropping off recently. The Hoovers recently paid about $400,000 for a home on five acres outside Austin and have plans to move in the next two months.

The growth of Portland, Salt Lake City, Boise and Seattle can be attributed in part to an influx of former Californians and people opting out of slumping Las Vegas or Phoenix. The trend may have created smaller echo booms — especially in Boise and Salt Lake City — which have slowed in the past several months, with each city experiencing a slow winter. Other areas, too, have experienced faster-than-average appreciation, including the New York City borough of Manhattan and New Orleans.

While some worry that a new group of cities could face a boom-and-bust cycle, local real-estate agents and economists predict stable growth for the near future. Since the cities have strong economies and builders, lenders and investors are increasingly cautious, homes are less likely to become extremely overvalued than in booming markets in the first half of the decade.

Mr. Yun of the National Association of Realtors predicts prices nationally will bottom out sometime this summer. Mr. Zandi, of Moody’s Economy.com, isn’t so sanguine. “I’d be shocked if [prices stop depreciating] this summer; it’s more likely next summer,” he says.

Laura Chung, an interior decorator who recently moved to Portland, Ore., from Cambridge, Mass., sees the strong market as the ultimate stress reliever. Mrs. Chung, and her husband, Eric, are considering sprucing up their new home and selling it if they find a house more to their liking — a prospect that wasn’t so simple back in Cambridge. “It’s not this perpetual worry that we’re not going to sell” the 2,500-square-foot house, she says. While Mrs. Chung’s move to Portland had nothing to do with the housing prices, they “definitely ease the wallet a little.”

After sitting on the market from June to December 2006, the Chungs’ 1,200-square-foot Cambridge, Mass. townhouse condominium sold for $70,000 less than the asking price. “The number of condos in our price point was at some record high,” Mrs. Chung says.

To attract a buyer, their real-estate agent suggested purchasing a flat-screen TV and including it in the price of the house. When the home finally sold, the buyer didn’t want the TV.

[smfj]

4plexowner, you know, when i first read your comment i thought, he lives in charlotte too? because we have something called the center city development group or something to that effect and they keep talking about how x many more people will live in downtown charlotte in x years.

i left uptown bubble today to go to target. it takes about 10 minutes to get to wide open underdeveloped spaces. i don’t think they’ll ever be able to claim that we’re running out of land here.

[Cow_tipping]

OK fine I am wrong … again …
But I am looking at license plates. Maybe the 1/2 backs done have Florida plates. maybe they still have their old states plates … namely NY/NJ or Ohio … All the ohio people I met recently are younger though.
Yes we got banking … I’d give us that.
Cool.
Cow_tipping.

[sddreaming]

smfj and cow_tipping, maybe you should start your own Charlotte NC branch of Piggington. Sounds like the area could use some RE bubble enlightenment.

[smfj]

not a bad idea. but i’m not sure people here are ready for that.

(then again, san diego wasn’t ready for piggington two years ago, but look at it now!)

[Cow_tipping]

Yea … pigginton makes me want to list my house now and go to an apartment … well I got too much crap for an partment … so I am stuck I guess.
Cool.
Cow_tipping.

[Author]

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