In Charlotte, More Choice and Stable Prices in August

Charlotte's housing market ended the summer with a familiar mix: prices holding, sales slowing and more homes for buyers to consider.

The Canopy Realtor Association, which compiles data for the Charlotte region, titled its August release "More Choice, Stable Prices Define Charlotte's August Housing Market." The report, released September 29, puts the region's median sales price at $427,500, up 0.6 percent from a year earlier.

Sales Slow, Inventory Grows

Closed sales across the 16-county region fell 8.7 percent year over year in August. Active inventory rose 7.1 percent to 13,574 homes for sale, a sign of how much more choice buyers have than at the peak of the pandemic-era scramble.

Even with that growth, the market is still not balanced by the usual yardstick. Months of supply held at 3.7, well below the six-month level that economists generally treat as the dividing line between a seller's and buyer's market. In practical terms, it would take a bit under four months to sell every home on the market at the current pace of sales, which still favors sellers.

Reading the Region

The region Canopy covers extends well beyond Mecklenburg County, so its figures blend many different communities. Taken together, the headline measures describe a market that has stopped heating up without cooling off.

Canopy also publishes separate reports for the Asheville area and the Catawba Valley, and the association noted in its late-August release that buyer activity in the Catawba Valley region was picking up as inventory grew.

Source: Canopy Realtor Association.