Myrtle Beach Real Estate

Are we putting deals together, but not closing them because of financing?

We currently have 7,740 condos available for sale in the Myrtle Beach area.  During the month of May, 2008, the number of condos sold in the Myrtle Beach area was only 261 units.  That is a mere 3.37% of the inventory sold.  At that rate, it will take us almost 2.5 years to sell out of the current inventory.  That 3.37% figure is still encouraging because previous figures for many months stood at two points below that.

When I pulled the number of units that have contracts in place and are waiting to close, I was encouraged to see much higher numbers: 672 Pending financing, 34 Contingency Contracts and 106 Pending Cash Terms, for a total of 812 units waiting to close.  That is 10.49%, a significantly higher number than the number of units sold. 

Normally that would mean that the market is obviously moving up.  The only problem is:  last month, the numbers were very similar: there were three times as many pending sales as the number of units sold, a very similar scenario to the current figures (for May).  What is happening here?  Are we putting deals together, but not closing them because of financing?  Are the deals taking longer to close?  I know that several of the deals I've had,  have taken longer than anticipated to close (10 days in underwriting???) when financing was involved (I've had a lot of cash buyers lately).  A few of them I've had to move to two and three different lenders in order to close them. 

What is happening here?  I've only had these figures for April and May (prior to that the market was in the toilet).  I am looking forward to pulling June's figures! 

If anyone would like to impart a vignette of your market or shed some light on what is happening here, I would love to read it!  Please do share!

Myrtle Beach Real Estate by Mirela Monte