With the uncertainty of the residential housing market, how will the Luxury/Lake be affected in the coming year? The Lake Murray Lifestyle team turned to Brent Downing, owner of The Downing Group at Keller Williams Realty, for answers.
"Mortgage rates remain high while inventory continues to be tight," he verifies. “We see that a large portion of the Luxury/Lake Murray market is cash buyers so the interest rates don’t directly affect the health of this market, however, it does keep some buyers on the sidelines due to the overall economic uncertainty out there,” Downing replied.
“Inventory, the amount of homes available for sale, still remains very tight, so that is a plus for homeowners in this category who want to sell their home.” This low inventory is keeping prices up without significant declines but it is taking longer to sell these properties with many of the buyers who do need a mortgage waiting out the rate decline."
"So far we've not seen price pressure in our market that would cause equity levels to drop, and I personally don't see a huge decline in prices like we saw in 2008-11 here in the Columbia area. Depending on which poll you believe, South Carolina is either the second or third highest state for people to move to in the country. I’m seeing no appreciable change in that dynamic," says Brent.
Rather than a V-shaped or W-shaped housing market recovery, Brent says he subscribes to the U-shaped economic recovery. "At this point, there's nothing to recover from in our local housing market. It's extremely strong from a seller's perspective," he adds.
After working in the Lake Murray region since 2009, and owning property there himself, Brent says he feels he's "seen it all."
"When people decide to buy on Lake Murray, they start out wanting a score of 10 in every category: view, home layout, price, schools, decor, distance from Columbia and several others. What they find is there's no home out there that will score a 10 in more than a few categories, so there are compromises that will need to be made. Generally speaking, I find, after budget, that schools/location is usually the starting point, then how the home fits the bill, layout, size, is it updated, etc, wins over the view," says Brent.
"That's totally a generalization, however, I do find it rare that someone will buy a project house on what most would consider would be a prime lot.," he adds.
Brent assures that his team always puts clients' best interests first. "Our clients trust us. That's why we have hundreds of stellar reviews from past clients and why our biggest source of business is from our past clients and who they refer to us," he says.
"We know our markets better than anyone. No one outworks us, we answer our phones at all hours. We love helping people so our service levels are unparalleled. We are expert negotiators and we're always results-focused on behalf of our clients. This culture is why my team of dedicated professional realtors has become the top real estate team in the Midlands," Brent says.
803.381.8950
brentd@thedowningteam.com
TheDowningTeam.com