By Jodi Koviach
For anyone who attended the ribbon cutting for the new 21C Museum Hotel in downtown Durham, the message was clearly that Durham has arrived and is here to stay. The ribbon cutting took place on the heels of more national attention in the Wall Street Journal about our cutting edge local food scene (www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-place-you-should-eat-in-america-1426263405) and Google announcing the Triangle as its next venture in Google Fiber. There are so many great things happening in this city it’s hard to name them all. People clearly love this town and want to live here and long-time residents don’t want to leave (who can blame them!).
So, what does this mean for homebuyers? If you’re an active buyer in Durham you may have noticed that there is somewhat of a shortage of houses for sale. In fact, the current inventory for homes for sale in Durham is 23% lower than it was this time last year, and we only have 3.4 months of inventory compared to 4.6 last February 2014. For those real estate geeks out there, months of inventory is the amount of time it would take to sell all listings at the current rate of sales if no new listings come available. The upside is that the average sales price of a home in Durham (year to date) of $198,569 has gone down from 2014 ($203,795) and our median sales price ($175,175) is just slightly higher over last year ($174,965).
What does this mean for our clients? There is definitely less inventory out there and houses are not staying on the market as long. In some of the more competitive Durham markets buyers and sellers need to be prepared for multiple offer situations. But this is not the case for every neighborhood and house. This is where we come in – navigating the ins and outs of the Durham market for both buyers and sellers is tricky right now and we can help. We’re just excited that you found us – Durham, Urban Durham, that is!