Columbia's housing market

[CorgiMatt]

Holder is expecting an uptick in Columbia's apartment and condo market.

http://screnews.blogspot.com/2008/08/apart...er-expects.html

[CorgiMatt]

Columbia's housing market sold over 900 homes last month, the most in the state again.

http://www.screaltors.com/mls/SC_MLS_July08.pdf

[CorgiMatt]

Columbia's housing market continues to weather the storm. Let's hope that even Wall Street's collapse won't hurt us.

http://www.columbiabusinessreport.com/news...t-in-good-shape

[CorgiMatt]

In its current edition, Smart Money magazine, a subsidiary of the Wall Street Journal, has Columbia featured in an article that's highlighted on the cover called "Surprise: 25 housing markets set to rebound." I can't figure out how to read the article online because all I can pull up is a site from which you can subscribe to the mag, so I'm not providing a link to it here.

Unfortunately the Columbia region's home prices were down 9% in September compared to September 2008. The MSA continues to sell the most houses in the state for 2008, though.

[krazeeboi]

I just talked to a customer today, a middle-aged/older gentleman, who's moving to Columbia from Miami. I remarked that that was quite a move, and he responded by saying that it simply makes sense economically. I suspect that cost, along with a relatively stable local economy, is what drives the health of Columbia's housing market first and foremost.

[Captain Worley]

^^That's true. My FIL lives in FL and is looking at rental properties up here. He says its a lot more stable than his area, where prices tanked. He couldn't believe prices were only down 3% here (as per the realtor at the time).

We're very lucky not to have gotten into the speculation debacle.

[CorgiMatt]

Permits for new home construction in the Columbia market are at 1997 levels. We have a 10-month oversupply of houses on the market, and things are not expected to change until significant absorption takes place.

http://www.thestate.com/breaking/story/616854.html

[krazeeboi]

Wow, it's certainly a buyer's market right now.

[CorgiMatt]

It's even more of a buyer's market now, but Builder magazine projects that Columbia's housing market, despite the fact that it didn't fall much in the first place, will have the 48th strongest recovery in the nation in 2010. They cite another expected "strong gain in population" (12,172 from 7/1/08 to 7/1/09 [uS Census Bureau]) as one reason why.

http://www.builderonline.com/local-markets/healthiest-housing-markets-for-2010-21-40.aspx

[BryCola]

Actually it's 28th strongest, not 48th. When I read the post, I was thinking "geez...48th strongest is 3rd weakest". LOL I'm sure it was just a typo above.

[CorgiMatt]

The list is of the 20 second best markets. That makes Columbia 48th.

[Infinite1]

If am reading this correctly, Columbia is in fact the 28th market. The list covers markets ranked #21-40. I guess the top twenty was previously listed. Nevertheless, it is good news for Columbia.

[CorgiMatt]

You are reading it correctly. I was wrong again. So, Columbia's housing market, even though it hasn't had the fall so many markets have had, is expected to be the 28th strongest-recovering in the nation this year. Thank you for pointing out that #28 in #'s 21 through 40 is #28.

[Ronak]

The State has some statistics on how the housing market fared in Q1 of this year:

http://www.thestate.com/2010/04/20/1251408/home-sales-up-in-sc-down-in-midlands.html?RSS=local

Basically, home prices are up slightly, but home sales are down slightly in Columbia from last year, which isn't particularly unusual, given how stable we were through the recession.

[waverider]

I saw an article on Yahoo! about ten cities where you could buy a home for less than $800 a month. Columbia was one of the ten cities featured.

[krazeeboi]

I saw an article on Yahoo! about ten cities where you could buy a home for less than $800 a month. Columbia was one of the ten cities featured.

For some reason I thought that list would be dominated by cities Columbia's size and smaller, but Columbia was certainly in good company on that list, being named with cities like Austin, Columbus, OH, the Twin Cities, and Atlanta.