Beaufort SC Real Estate - 2010 Trends & Statistics

The Beaufort, SC real estate market saw a pair of notable trends in 2010 -- prices continued to decline, but the number of transactions spiked up dramatically, as investors and cash buyers began to re-emerge.

The medan asking price for homes sold via the Beaufort Multiple Listing Service (MLS) dipped to $174,000, it's lowest point in years, according to Beaufort MLS figures. However, the number of transactions jumped from 791 homes in 2009, to 971 in 2010.

The manner in which buyers are purchasing homes in Beaufort continues to change. Cash sales represented a whopping 28 percent of the home transactions in the Beaufort MLS.

This is more than double the 12.5 percent of cash buyers participating in the 2008 Beaufort MLS real estate market. In 2007, cash buyers represented less than 10 percent of all buyers, so the number of cash buyers has just about tripled in a matter of three years.

 

Meanwhile, as lending practices become more stringent, the number of homes purchased using conventional loans continues to decline. For the second straight year, conventional purchases represented less than half (42 percent) of the Beaufort MLS home sales. Compare that to 2007, when about 75 percent of all Beaufort home buyers utilized conventional loans.

We get asked a lot about the "sold versus asking price" figures, and you have to be careful with these. In 2010, buyers paid an average of 93 percent of the asking price. But, in many instances, a homes price would have already been lowered significantly before it sold, which would not have been reflected in our Beaufort MLS stats.

Take, for instance, a fictitious Beaufort home which was listed for $100,000 and sold for $95,000. This home may appear to have sold for 95 percent of the asking price, but the original asking price may have been $130,000, so the sales price would only be 73 percent of the original asking price. Unfortunately, the Beaufort Multiple Listing Service doesn't offer reports with "sold versus original asking price" figures, so we just have to do the best we can with what we have.