Get your wallets: It's a buyer's market!

 

Local real-estate agents say buyers are starting to increase in numbers here, but there still are more homes and villas on the market than usual.

"Buyers are starting to look for bargains," said Bob Clarkson, general manager and partner in Re/Max Island Realty. "Certain sellers are becoming more desperate for a sale."

Data from the Hilton Head Multiple Listing Service, which tracks sales of existing homes on and around Hilton Head Island, show that the number of home and villa sales and the values of those sales have fluctuated some in July, August and September, but don't show a clear trend in terms of prices or sales numbers.

For James Wedgeworth, a top Realtor with Charter I, the best news to help cure the somewhat sluggish market is that there wasn't any weather news.

"Having no hurricanes in September to hit the U.S. has been the best news we've ever had," Wedgeworth said.

A lack of disasters isn't the only trend that should help bring buyers into the market.

Interest rates, which had been climbing over the past year, have leveled off. Gas prices spiked but are drifting down. And the stock market is performing at a record clip, meaning people feel good about their wealth and the economy at large, said Julie Toon Pawley, owner of Julie Toon Pawley Real Estate on the island.

"I'm already seeing a number more inquires than I had ..., and I'm showing more (properties) than I had been," Toon Pawley said.

The Hilton Head market probably won't see significant price drops in the near future that many metropolitan areas are likely to see, said Jim Ferguson, a broker with Charter I Realty and Marketing.

"The bottom line as to why the real-estate market in Hilton Head is such a good investment versus major metropolitan areas is that Hilton Head is a select resort community," he said. "We offer a relatively safeguarded real-estate marketplace."

Add that security and good economic indicators to the fact that there are two or three times the number of properties on the market than there were a year ago during the peak of the real-estate market and you have a buyer's market.

"A year ago people would call and tell me what they were looking for and I wouldn't have anything for them," said Wedgeworth. "In fact, I found that they usually had to pay a premium because there were three or four people trying to buy at the same time. So from a buyer's perspective, now they have a great selection."

Andy Twisdale, president of the Hilton Head Area Realtors Association and a Realtor with Charter I, said this is the best housing inventory on the market, from a buyer's point of view, that he's seen in seven years.

The area is filled with a number of specific markets that don't always mirror each other. For instance, homes in Bluffton are selling extremely well, better than homes on the island, Twisdale said.

Real-estate agents say home-owners probably won't face a reduction in the value of their homes over the long run, but some of the price increases created by the hot market in 2005 may have to be given back to sell a home in 2006.

"This is an adjustment period from the wildest housing market we've had here in our lifetime," said Re/Max's Clarkson.