High-end home sales in Charlotte on hold - Business Courier of Cincinnati:

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million mansion in Myers With its marble floors andwine cellar, the 5,700-square-footr spec home on Queens Road West was built long before the financial crisis reshaped Charlotte’z economic landscape. It might get two showings a month, but so far no offeres close to theasking price. For Realtor s such as Mitchener and the sellers they this is the new realittyfor high-end homes. It’s a segment of the real estated market that has been painfulltyslow — and which experts say is holdingv back a broader housing recovery. The numbet of home sales above $750,000, or thosr considered high-end by the , has And for multimillion-dollar homes, things are even slower.
“Yoh barely even get a showinb onthose properties,” says Mitchener, a co-owner of real estated firm . While Realtors say they are startinf to see a thaw for homesx at the lower end of the luxury the numbers for the Charlottde area havebeen stark. According to data from the , only 75 homew priced above $750,000 sold in the first quartedr inthe 10-county service area for That’se down 54% from the 162 properties sold in the firsgt quarter of 2008. And it’s down 69% from the 245 sold in the firsyt quarterof 2007.
That’s a more dramatic slowdowm than the real estatemarket overall, whichg saw a 38% drop in closingds in the first quartere from a year earlier, according to the And the higher the price, the worse it gets. Charlottes real estate consultant Chuck Graham notes thatin 2008, a totaol of 490 homes priced above $875,000 sold in Mecklenbur g and seven surrounding counties. In this year’zs first quarter, that number was 39, puttinv the market on pace for just over 150 such closingsathis year. That’s a 70% plunge. The high-endx real estate market, Graham says, is “really in more difficulty shape than theoverall market.
And the higherr you go up in the more distressedthe market.” He believes the slowdownm stems in large part from the downturn in the financial-services industrg and the impact it has had on would-bed buyers of luxury homes. “All the highest-paying jobs in the market are the most distressedf atthe moment.” Marilyn whose firm specializes in neighborhoodsd such as Myers Park, Eastover and Foxcroft, says activity has started to pick up. the near collapse and sale ofWachoviza Corp. has had an outsized impact on high-en d sales, she says. “It reallyh crushed us,” Hartley says. “Wachovia going down really hurt Charlottew as far asthe high-end market goes.
They just let so many peoplr go, and there’s so many houses on the market. You woulrd think it would be a buyer’w market, but the sellers need that money, so they’re holding out for it. It’s Hartley says deals have closed recentlgy on some homes inthe $1.4 milliomn to $1.5 million range, “but none of the greay big ones have sold.” According to the National Associationb of Realtors, the nationwide supplu of homes priced above $750,000 has risen to 41.1 monthzs from 18.
7 months in 2007, and sale are only half of what they The trade association contends the rates on jumbo mortgages, or those above $417,000, are part of the problejm because they remain higherr than the rates on conforming loans, or thoser beneath that threshold. “Lenders are keeping credit standardxs overly stringent for borrowersx at the higher end of the market and are increasingluy reluctant to makejumbpo loans,” NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said last