Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Real estate stats from the first quarter of 2019 are trickling in, and show continued cooling of what, for the past few years, had been a red-hot real estate market in Asheville.
Home prices aren’t rising as fast as they were a few years ago in Asheville, and it’s taking longer for houses on the market to sell. That means the market is “shifting away from a strictly seller’s market, especially in the City of Asheville,” reports Mosaic Community Lifestyle Realty.
A few highlights:
Sales: 273 homes sold in the city of Asheville in the first quarter of 2019, an 8.4 percent decrease compared to first quarter 2018. But 511 homes were sold in Buncombe County, a 10.8 percent increase. What’s going on? Buyers are looking for cheaper houses.
Prices: The median home sale price in city of Asheville was $295,000 in first quarter 2019, a 2.5 percent decrease compared to first quarter of last year. In Buncombe County, the median home sale price remained unchanged at $275,000.
Days on market: In Asheville, the average days on market was 80 days in the first quarter of 2019. That is a 15.9 percent increase compared to the first quarter of 2018, when that number was 69 days. In Buncombe County, the average days on market increased from 89 days to 93 days, a 4.5 percent increase, for the same two periods.
Outside Asheville/Buncombe County: The pace of home sales, as defined by days on market, is picking up in some counties outside Buncombe. Over in Haywood County, homes had an average of 26 days on market for the first quarter of 2019, compared to 93 DOM in Buncombe. Beverly-Hanks has a great regional analysis here.
