Charlotte Jan Real Estate Market Increase

Charlotte area home sales posted an increase last month, a turnaround from steady declines that worsened last fall as the nation's mortgage mess hit home.
The number of houses, townhouses and condos sold within about a 50-mile radius rose 5 percent compared with January of 2007, according to figures released Tuesday by the Carolina Multiple Listing Services. That's the first monthly gain since February last year and a big jump from declines of 20 percent and more in the last three months.
"It kind of got busy the second half of January," said Bob Hecht, owner of Century 21 Hecht Realty in Denver. "This is not going to be a record-setting year for real estate but I think it will still be a good year."
Tighter lending standards and rising foreclosures have quashed sales, pushing the country toward recession. National home sales figures for January won't be released until later this month. Economists and other experts have said the housing market likely won't begin to recover until at least the second half of the year.
Charlotte has weathered the crisis better than many markets, but builders have cut back sharply as sales hit double-digit declines. Still, the region benefits from job growth and an influx of newcomers. Lower interest rates also have likely helped spur sales.
"We've seen that slowly everybody started to kind of get a grip," said Charlotte Epley, a Realtor with Newport Properties, which focuses on the Lake Norman area. "We don't have a bad market. It's just not the super market that we've had."
In hard hit areas, home prices have been tumbling. Charlotte has been one of the few areas still seeing home price increases as of November, the latest figures available from national indexes.
The average area price slipped slightly in January, to $218,610 from $219,270 a year earlier, but prices were up a little from December, according to MLS figures, which account for nearly all existing home sales and about one-quarter of new home sales.
"You can't play the market like you might have," said Epley, who said Newport is getting more calls and more people looking at houses. "You can get a decent price but not way up there."