The research for this monthly market report is provided by Brad Rundbaken, of Diversified Resource Group, LLC, a real estate appraiser, consultant and investor with a stock brokerage background. He analyzes the Charleston real estate market using the Charleston-Trident MLS and inserts a lot of extra analysis on the national housing market. In fact, he crams it in there and he’s not afraid to share his opinions. Check out his web site: charlestonmarketreport.com

I got to speak with him after he was terminated by his former employer (an appraisal firm) after he started publishing his market stats in 2006. However, honesty pays and he tells me his consulting business is doing well.

…Jonathan Miller

View the 2008 report. There many pages of chart rant in the intro – the stats themselves are found midway if the tables below are too small too read.

Here are some of his observations pertaining to the overall Charleston market.

>The two main trends for 2008 were that the average and median price declined for both the attached and detached
homes. I discussed this quite a bit in 2007 and the overall price decline trend showed up in 08. This is a natural
occurrence of the downturn in any economic cycle, especially a deflationary one like we are in right now. Price
declines are not bad because this helps clean up the excess inventory in the market so it can return to a more
affordable and equilibrium state. The fact that new housing starts and new building permits decline is healthy for any
market with excess supply. We do not want inventory to continuously grow or we run the risk of future price declines
and foreclosures. Even though months inventory for both attached and detached homes has increased in 2008 due to
sales slowing from a brutal September and October stock market and the seasonality of the real estate market the
current inventory has been declining in both housing segments since reaching highs during the summer months. Yes,
there are a bunch of homes still sitting on the market but I hope the low interest rates and price declines will help. I
will monitor this trend closely over the next few months.