The only thing that was good about the real estate market in 2009 is that it is making this year look great!

2009 ended up with sales just about what they were in 2005, and off nearly 30% from the highs of 2007. But if the trend from the first half of this year holds, that will have been the bottom as overall sales are up over 20% this year in Anderson County.

We’ve just finished up the Anderson County Real Estate Market Update (Download a PDF version) and it looks pretty encouraging. Almost everything is up, – total sales (from 598 to 729), average sales price (from about $128,000 to about $130,000) and even the average days on market is heading in the right direction (down 8 days to 141). And the trend seems to be in all geographic areas of the county (one exception is the downtown Anderson area) and in all price ranges except $300 to $400,000 for some reason. Also encouraging is the total number of homes sold on Lake Hartwell (in all SC counties) which more than doubled from 29 homes last year to 70 homes this year even though the average sales price dropped by $50,000.

On a month by month basis, every month this year has beaten the year before except February.

The only weak spot on the horizon is that the number of homes on the market has also been increasing, although not as fast as sales thankfully. But the increase in homes for sale is keeping downward pressure on prices (which has increased 1.7%). A quick look at this chart of Active Listings tells the story:

But overall we’re happy with the current trends. While we’d like to see more activity in the move-up buyer segment, and still fully 85% of the market is in the under $200,00 range, we’ll take what we can get. While last year was bad, this year is better and we like to look at the glass as half full.