LaTrelle Pevey sells residential real estate for a living, so rarely does an incoming telephone call go unanswered.
Slideshow: Homes for sale in Savannah
“Only if I’m with a client or in a closing will I put my phone on silent, and even then I keep my earpiece in just in case there’s a lull and I can answer,” Pevey said. “And I always get back to a missed call. That’s how you do business. You gotta be available.”
The ratio of answered-to-returned calls is changing for Pevey and other Realtors who work in Effingham County. Effingham is “slamming” as the spring home buying season ramps up.
April saw 74 sales within the county, the most since the housing bust leveled the residential market in Savannah’s neighboring county, with 65 more homes under contract heading into May.
Effingham’s momentum helped the Savannah-area market, which includes Chatham and Bryan counties as well, post a 23 percent jump in sales in April compared to April 2012. The 447 sales made April the third busiest month of the last half-decade and promises a summer Savannah’s real estate market hasn’t seen since before the recession.
“We’re selling a lot more and our new inventory is still slow coming in, so our market is going to keep on like this through the summer,” said Donna Davis, president of the Savannah Area Board of Realtors. “We can now say it has picked back up to where it was in the mid-2000s, and at a much more sustainable pace.”
The inventory, or the number of homes list for sale, jumped in April as would-be sellers put their homes on the market in anticipation of the buying season. But the months’ supply of inventory, a measure that reflects the number of months it would take to exhaust the current inventory at the average sales pace, continued to make Realtors smile.
The three-county average is under 10 months, and the pickier home shoppers are finding it more difficult to “find what they are looking for,” said Tommy Danos, a Realtor with ERA Southeast Coastal Real Estate.
“That’s another indication, besides stats, that inventory is dropping,” Danos said. “You can see in some areas and some specific price points where the sellers are calling the shots now, and prices are rising as a result.”
Effingham’s momentum is related to price and inventory. But the county’s median price has remained low even as the supply has dropped to 7.3 months. The median price in Effingham is $135,780, compared to $162,950 in Chatham County and $227,500 in Bryan, and isn’t appreciating the way Chatham’s and Bryan’s prices are due to an abundance of cheap, developable lots owned by builders eager to meet buyer needs.
The stable, low prices have made Effingham a hotspot for first-time buyers, Pevey said.
“It’s nice to see those lower price point homes being sold because we were inundated with that in our market,” Pevey said. “At the same time, we are seeing empty subdivisions with those kinds of homes coming out of the ground, so there is a pipeline for more supply.”
LOCAL HOME SALES SNAPSHOT
The summer home-buying season in the Savannah-area housing market (Chatham, Bryan and Effingham counties) got of to a hot start in April, with sales up 23 percent year over year in the month. A look at the local market (numbers include residential real estate, including single-family homes, modulars, townhomes and condominiums):
Month Inventory New Sales Pending Price
April 2013 3,893 739 447 350 $201,881
March 2013 3,019 542 379 324 $200,578
February 2013 3,668 555 290 234 $186,014
January 2013 3,871 641 302 274 $176,276
December 2012 3,139 380 372 163 $171,651
November 2012 3,272 481 383 220 $209,104
October 2012 3,424 710 388 242 $188,796
September 2012 3,298 509 333 242 $188,600
August 2012 3,477 638 468 223 $191,063
July 2012 3,460 610 444 278 $221,061
June 2012 3,630 649 471 283 $198,998
May 2012 3,584 639 397 331 $169,125
April 2013 3,893 739 447 350 $201,881
April 2012 3,694 648 363 275 $198,823
April 2011 4,480 663 324 295 $186,350
April 2010 5,285 804 342 367 $199,564
Source: Savannah Multi-List Corp.