Lenoir Co. real estate market shows slight increase; needs much improvement before considered healthy

Lenoir County saw a slight increase in home sales from 2010 to 2011, but there is a long way to go before the local housing market can be considered healthy.

That was the opinion of Jay Shackelford, owner of Rasberry Shackelford & Associates, a Greenville-based real estate valuation firm with offices in Kinston, New Bern, Morehead City and Rocky Mount.

“I’m not predicting any kind of big market turnaround for anybody in Eastern North Carolina until we have better employment numbers,” Shackleford said Friday.

He recently put out a year-end report for single-family home sales in Lenoir County — the figures were drawn from the local Multiple Listing Service report, maintained by area Realtors.

The report showed 168 sales in 2011, compared with 155 in 2010, the lowest the market had been since 2007, when there were 271 real estate sales.

The median sale price was $70,000 in 2011, compared with $76,400 in 2010. The median price had been $89,500 in 2006.

Shackleford stressed the median price is the midpoint price of all sale prices in a year, and higher sales of lower-end homes can skew the median lower.

One encouraging sign in the report was that five newly-built homes had sold during 2011, meaning there was life in the local construction market.

Shackleford noted there is still a significant backlog of unsold homes in Lenoir County — his firm analyzes real estate markets in 14 counties in Eastern North Carolina, and at 15.5 months of overall inventory, Lenoir has the third-highest inventory, behind Carteret and Beaufort counties.

At 16.8 months of new construction, Lenoir County has the second-highest inventory of new construction, before Carteret County.

Regardless, local Realtors are encouraged by even a slight increase in home sales — Shackleford’s report noted the number of pending sales, or those expected to sell in the next 30 to 45 days, ticked up from 18 in December 2011 to 20 this month.

“I think there’s definitely been an uptick,” said JoAnn MacHamer, a real estate broker with ERA Humphrey Realty Group in Kinston. “I think we’ve seen activity in these winter months.”

MacHamer said the spring and summer are typically the busiest times for real estate sales, but she was encouraged to see greater interest in the wintertime.

She also said there appears to be “a renewed interest in new construction” among potential buyers, and many individual homes have been built on lots around “Kinston proper,” along with small subdivisions.

 MacHamer said there is a variety of types of buyers, including retirees, people who have moved to the area to work with new industry, people who have rented for some time to get a feel for the area and are now buying, and more.

“It’s a good mixed bag right now,” MacHamer said. “It’s an indicator, I think, of a moving market, of a healthier market.”

Kathy Riggs, broker in charge at Walter Poole Realty in Kinston, was also encouraged by the increased sales.

“It does seem like at our office and with the other Realtors that I talk with, we’re seeing a little bit of improvement in activity,” Riggs said.

Interest rates in the U.S. are also at historically low rates —Federal Reserve officials announced this week they planned to keep the “benchmark” interest rate at about a quarter of a percent, near zero, through 2014 to help spur the economy.

Mortgage rates have gone up recently, but they are still historically low as well, hovering at just below 4 percent.

“As low as interest rates are and as low as prices are, this is a good time to buy,” Riggs said.

Bloomberg Businessweek contributed to this report. David Anderson can be reached at 252-559-1077 or danderson@freedomenc.com. Follow him on Twitter at DavidFreePress.