house values (Beaufort, Tega Cay, Bluffton: short sales, real estate, 2011)

[lacecrazy]

Is anyone seeing an increase in house values in Bluffton?

[HHIslander67]

Originally Posted by lacecrazy

Is anyone seeing an increase in house values in Bluffton?

No, housing values in Bluffton are not increasing. Is a real estate agent trying to tell you that?

[lacecrazy]

No, I just keep hearing the recession is over so I wondered if that meant that the housing values will increase. Do you think the market will turn around soon?

[krokus]

I am looking to buy in the Tega Cay area and have been receiving many offers from Real-easte agents. These people keep telling me that the crisis is over and proces are rising. Now is the time to buy, they say.

It is true that the new house market is very bouyant. Indeed new house sales are up and prices here are increasing slightly but, I do not want a new home.

Many of the exixting home listings that I am currently recieving are now price decreases.

The big danger with existing homes is the huge quantity of potential foreclosures over the next few months. This article Greenspan: housing could take another turn downward | Reuters is one of several that I have read recently.
About half of U.S. mortgages seen underwater by 2011 | Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/busin...57C0M620090813
are two others.

I am intending to buy in February 2010 if I do not see a massive decline. House proces are always at a seasonal low in Jan/Feb.

The low end of the market <$200K is obviously the most volatile but with increasing redundancies and lower incomes all round, there are many bargains to be had.

We are told that the economy is improving but whilst this is a general world-wide trend, in the US ia fear that this may be currently falsified by GM et al starting manufacture again.

I do not wish to be seen as sounding doom and gloom but I genuinely do not feel that a recovery is imminent.

Just my 2 cents.

[lacecrazy]

It is risky buying right now. We relocated here so we felt the pressure to buy, and we're hoping the market will turn around and NOT take another dive. We did get the house we wanted; we just had hoped we could have gotten it about $20,000 less, but then I guess we all feel that way. I believe that this area will eventually prosper. Two or three years ago, we wouldn't have been able to purchase a home because the prices were very high.

[arrgy]

I think housing values are dropping in Beaufort county and going to drop for a while. You have a lot of short sales, not foreclosures, on the market now that aren't being looked at. They will move into foreclosure soon. You have a number of developments that broke ground a couple of years ago and haven't been touched. At the New Riverside complex each development is only half way done, if that. And those houses which used to be $200K+ are going for $130-150. And they aren't rushing to move them either.
I am currently looking in the area and my max price range is $190K. I can not find anything half way decent. It seems that any nice property starts at $230K on up. Everything from $200K and lower are clones of themselves, its the same house over and over, no one is taking the time or effort to make their house stand out. You could go new construction, which is nice on the inside, but the outside is horrible, everyone cramped on top of one another with no land, and no privacy. And really there is nothing between $200 and $230, its just a black hole where no one is listing. I actually considered a townhouse and put an offer on it but I am going to back out of it hoping for something better. The same is true in Jasper county and Bluffton. I even looked in Savannah, but those properties are way too old.