Photo Credit: Belle Jennings – West Bravo Realty

It is a seller’s market right now when it comes to real estate.  Home sales in Chattooga County continue to be brisk according to local real estate agents.

This year, in the month of May, there were 22 properties sold in Chattooga County with a median price of $124,750, that compares to just 12 homes sold in May of 2020.

While some homes are going for well above appraised value right now, the median prices actually dropped since May of last year when the average home price was $202,500.  The difference can most likely be attributed to the types of homes that were sold in May of 2020 and the fact that only 12 properties closed during that month when few home owners were willing to sell during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The numbers are even more dramatic when you go back just five years to May of 2016 when the median price of a property in Chattooga County was just $64,000.

Local real estate agent Belle Jennings with West Bravo Realty says that in her experience over the past several months, homes are selling after just a few weeks on the market.  In some cases, that drops to just days.  Jennings said, ” If they are priced at the value on my comparative market analyses homes sell in less than a week typically. I have a few cases that have asked to price it higher and they typically last less than a month.”

Jennings also said that landlords are selling a lot of rental houses right now which could also account for the lower median prices of houses.  On the other hand, investors are paying almost four times as much for houses to “flip”.

Lumber prices have been extremely high since the first of the year, but that hasn’t slowed demand.  Since Chattooga County is one of only of a handful of counties in the state that does not require building permits, it is difficult to know how many new home constructions are taking place county wide.

The good news is lumber prices have decreased over the past two weeks, but a shortage in the labor market means that new home construction projects are getting pushed further back by contractors which is likely to continue the demand for existing homes.