The Week in Review
…..your Wilmington Connection
March 22, 2009
Currently in Wilmington there are 2767 properties on the market, in the last 3 months there have been 360 solds. Right now there are 314 properties under contract that’s 11%. If you are selling your home you need to be serious about the price. Buyers now look across the board to see what is the best value for money. They dont look in a particular subdivision or area anymore. You need to make sure yours is one of the top 4 best values in your price range. The price range $450,000 and upward are looking at a minimum of at least 39 months worth of inventory. Two really difficult price ranges are $800,000 to $900,000 and $600,000 to $700,000 topping out at 72 months. Buyers for you it is an opportunity.
Now for good news for NC
The N.C. economy could start to recover this summer if banks begin making more loans and the federal stimulus package puts more people to work, a UNC Charlotte economist said Tuesday.
“We’re through the worst of it,” John Connaughton said of the recession. “We’ve probably got another couple of months before it turns around.”
That rebound, though, will be slow and won’t keep North Carolina from losing more than 178,000 jobs between the start of 2008 and end of 2009, said Connaughton, author of the quarterly UNC Charlotte economic forecast.
The state lost 120,100 jobs last year and is expected to lose another 58,200 this year – a two-year total that is nearly double what Connaughton estimated just three months ago. He also gave a bleaker outlook for N.C. unemployment – which was 9.7 percent in January – saying it could peak at 11 percent at year’s end.
Surprise Surprise …Housing starts surge.
WASHINGTON — Housing construction posted a surprisingly large increase in February, bolstered by strength in all parts of the country except the West.
While the surge in construction was far better than the continued decline economists had expected, experts viewed the rebound as a temporary gain given all the problems the housing industry still faces.
The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that construction of new homes and apartments jumped 22.2 percent in February compared with January, pushing total activity to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 583,000 units.
Wilmington ranked 26 in population growth
Even as the national recession began, North Carolina’s metro areas continued to rank high in population growth, according to estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. In fact, Raleigh-Cary was ranked No. 1 and Wilmington, 26.
The population estimates, however, cover July 1, 2007, to July 1, 2008 – a period before unemployment had struck hard in the state. Since then construction jobs have dried up and the bottom dropped out of the banking industry.
North Carolina, and Wilmington, continued to draw new residents even as the recession hit hard in other areas of the country, according to James H. Johnson, of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina.
Though Johnson said he doesn’t see a strong correlation between jobs and population growth, “the recession hit other places much earlier and harder,” he said. “In things like construction there are tight networks, particularly in the Hispanic community. You go to where the jobs are.”
The rankings were based on percentage growth. The actual number of new residents for the Wilmington area grew by 8,232 between July 2007 and July 2008, to 347,012 from 338,780.
info and stats taken from observer, starnews and NAR
...until next week in The Week in Review
Tina
