John Boyle

jboyle@citizen-times.com

When it comes to buying a house in Buncombe County, he who waits will likely lose the deal.

The market set records in numerous categories in 2016, including the number of homes sold (4,226), the average selling price ($311,386) and average asking price, which climbed to $615,498. Homes also averaged 62 days on the market before selling, but that overall figure does not take into account super-hot areas such as West Asheville, where homes can easily sell the day they're listed.

Art Chwalek, an Ohio native who moved to West Asheville last year after a year in Chicago, knows all about waiting too long to make an offer. With his real estate agent, he found a condo in Black Mountain he really liked, drove out to check it out and came home that evening planning to read the homeowners' association bylaws.

"I started reviewing those that night, and my agent called me that night and said it was gone," Chwalek said. "I don’t think I even got the full read of the bylaws done and it was gone. The agent told me later that the person who bought it had bought it sight unseen after they saw it on the internet. They liked it enough just from that (virtual tour), and they never toured that property at all in person."

Chwalek had a few other homes slip through his fingers in similar fashion, even one or two that were listed and sold on the same day. Ultimately, he bought a home in West Asheville the same day he first toured it.

It's a 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath "shotgun" type house that was built four years ago. He paid about $300,000, and he's happy to have signed on the dotted line.

His real estate agent, Tom Haskin of The Buyer's Agent of Asheville, said he had his best year in a decade. While the market is great for sellers, it's tough for buyers, and...

"I don’t see any sign of it slowing down," Haskin said. "It’s that simple economics thing — very high demand and very low inventory."

In Chwalek's case, he and Haskin looked "for months and months," as Haskin said, and it's not like Chwalek, a single 57-year-old who works as an information technology consultant, is super picky.

"He's a single man with not a lot of needs, but really finding something that was workable was still really challenging," Haskin said. "He bought a house within hours of looking at it, and that was a common theme of all the agents I talked to last year."

Don Davies, who compiled that year-end report on real estate sales, is the founder of Realsearch, a company that crunches local real estate statistics and analyzes trends. His statistics go back to 1990.

"We set just about every kind of record you can think of for this year just passed," Davies said, noting the number of home sales made in Buncombe for 2016 (4,226) eclipsed the previous record of 4,120 set in 2006, two years before the Great Recession and real estate bust hit.

"The interesting part is it’s the lowest inventory of existing homes for sales that we’ve had in 16 years, too," Davies said. "As of the end of December, we had 1,128 houses on the market — that’s in the whole county."

That average asking price of $615,498 is particularly telling, mainly because it has historically been driven up by a large number of million-dollar-plus homes on the market.

"We’re not skewing the average asking price now," Davies said. "We only have 144 homes over $1 million on the market, and that's been running as many as 250. It’s just the overall market has increased, and the value of the housing has increased, and every area has increased."

Tough market for locals

While that's good news for those in the business, and the local economy that benefits from well-heeled folks moving here who spend a lot of money, it's not great for local working folks.

"As good as it is right now, the thing that concerns me is everything is 'record this' and 'record that,' and I'm worried that Asheville is reaching that too-popular point," Haskin said. "I had several clients this year who were in the $250,000 and below range (for a house), and they just went away after awhile -- they just could not find a house in that range."

Davies said part of what's driving the price surge goes back to that simple lack of inventory, and a lag in builders constructing and selling new homes.

"With new home sales, the year we set a record with that was 2006, when we sold 916 homes that were brand new in Buncombe — that's homes condos and town houses," Davies said. "This (past) year, we sold 427. That give you some comparison. We set records in every other category, except new homes sales. But they have been increasing a little bit, on average, over the last five years."

New home sales have been strong for Beverly-Hanks, one of the largest real estate sales companies in the mountains. With 310 agents in six offices, the company does "a little over $1.2 billion in sales" annually, and 2016 was a banner year, according to company President Neal Hanks.

"It’ll be our best year to date, and we just celebrated our 40th year in business," Hanks said.

Hanks agrees with Davies that many of the buyers are coming from other markets, particularly those up north or Florida, where their homes have accumulated a lot of value and, despite what locals consider high prices here, they can still get a lot of house for the money. While all sales dried up after the recession, and investors buying lots or homes to flip also disappeared, those wanting to move to the mountains for the quality of life has resurged.

"It’s the same profile that we’ve seen for decades -- quality of life moves: people who want to live here, either pre-retirement or early retirement, or a job lets them live where they want to live," Hanks said. "The buyer profile really hasn’t changed that much."

While million-dollar homes were a dime a dozen before the crash, that's a lot less common now. Hanks said what they're seeing now is buyers looking for smaller, well-appointed homes at $300,000 and up. That means that sub-$300,000 market is "very tight," Hanks said.

"What we're seeing is people moving up to the $300,000-700,000 range is really kind of the sweet spot now," Hanks said.

Beverly-Hanks year-end report found 1,011 homes on the market in Buncombe County at the end of 2016, with 31 under $100,000 and 128 in the $100,000-$199,000 range. While 220 homes in the $200,000-$299,000 range were available, competition for them was fierce.

In that $300,000-$700,000 sweet spot, 399 homes were available.

One small positive sign that might indicate some relief for homebuyers in the sub-$300,000 market is land sales, which Davies said "have been pathetic" for more than five years.

"This last year started setting records on land sales," Davies said, referring to the transactions totals. "It looks like people can't find what they want, so they're saying, 'OK, I'll go ahead and build.'" So we're just starting to see a little bit of speculators."

Before the recession, a lot of builders would erect homes or subdivisions "on spec," meaning they did not have buyers yet. But after the crash, banks stopped loaning money for that activity.

For Chwalek, he knew when he moved to Asheville that the market would be hot, but he was surprised at the dearth of homes available in Asheville that were under $200,000 and didn't need a lot of work. He also learned the hard way not to hesitate.

"Yeah, I'd say time is of the essence," Chwalek said when asked what advice he'd give house hunters. "Either you or your real estate agent, or both of you, need to stay up on what listing came out today, and have the flexibility to go see it that day if you can."

Buncombe County Real Estate, year-end statistics for 2016

• Number of residential homes/condos/townhouses/mobiles sold in last 12 months: 4,226 (record)

• Average asking prices of all homes/condos/townhouses/mobiles currently on market: $615,498 (record)

• Average number sales per month: 353 (record).

• Average selling price of all homes/condos/townhouses/mobiles sold in 2016: $311,386 (record)

• Median selling price (equal number above and below): $253,950 (record)

• Average days on market before selling: 62.

• Total number residential home sales (homes, condos, town houses, mobile homes) available as of Jan. 6: 1,128.

• Number residential homes/condos/townhouses/mobile homes put on market in 2016: 5,000-plus.

• Highest price property on market: $11.95 M, 28804 zip code.

• Number of properties sold for over $1 Million Dollars in 2016: 63

• Number of properties currently available with asking price over $1 Million Dollars: 144

Source: Realsearch, Don Davies