Charlotte-area homebuilders reported an increase in sales during the third quarter, even with the recent rise in interest rates, according to data firm Metrostudy.
Metrostudy’s report on residential construction this week says “new housing data for Charlotte could not have been better” in the quarter that ended Sept. 30.
“Our projected 2013 year end growth of new home starts appears to have been too conservative,” Bill Miley, regional director of Metrostudy’s Charlotte Market, says in his latest report. “Expectations are now that we will have a 30 to 40 percent increase in starts. Closings are expected to be up 25 percent over last year."
Housing starts in the area for all product types spiked 51.3 percent in the latest quarter, rising to 2,893 from 1,912 during the same period in 2012, according to Metrostudy. That’s also an increase from last quarter, when housing starts totaled 2,262.
Third-quarter closings soared 55.1 percent from a year earlier, increasing to 2,652, the report says.
Metrostudy, a national housing data and consulting firm, bills itself as having “most extensive primary database on residential construction.”
The total local inventory of homes in all stages of construction — which includes finished but vacant houses, model homes and units under construction — is 4,611, considered a nearly seven-month supply. Metrostudy considers a six- to eight-month supply of inventory as equilibrium.
During the latest quarter, the finished vacant inventory plummeted to a 1.6-months supply, Metrostudy says.
“We closed more homes than we were able to complete,” the report states.
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