North Raleigh Today

County of Wake issued the following announcement on Jul. 24. 

June 2021 only saw two transactions in the very high-value segment (transactions worth $30 million and above):

• Windsor Falls Apartments, in Raleigh: $48 million.
• Woodlake Industrial Center (1000 and 1200 Innovation Avenue, Morrisville): $45 million.

The high-value segment, (transactions worth between $1 million to $30 million), had 158 transactions totaling nearly $380 million.

Transactions in the Core Market (property valued at $1 million or less) saw 3,411 transactions totaling $1.37 billion, up nearly $196 million (16.76%) from May 2021’s core market transactions of $1.17 billion.

The following chart shows the dollar value of real estate transfers by month broken down into three price ranges.

Aggregate Value Transferred by Parcel Price Range - June 2021

A breakdown of the dollar value of transactions by price range for the years 2014 – 2019 is available at Wake County 2019 Property Market and Trends 2014 - 2019

Median sales prices

The median sales price of a parcel of Wake County real estate was $383,000 for the month of June 2021. This price was a $9,000 increase from May 2021’s price of $374,000.Median Real Estate Sales Price Monthly 2021 - June 2021

Changes in median sales prices tend to be caused by activity in the core market. The occurrence or non-occurrence of large transactions has virtually no impact on the calculation of median values because there are so few of those transactions. 95.5% of June 2021’s transactions occurred in the core market.

Lending activity rose 7% in June

Real estate lending activity in June 2021 rose 7% from May 2021’s level but compared to June 2020, it was down 7.1%.

Real estate lending activity has two primary components.

1. The first is lending that coincides with a transfer of ownership of real estate. This is seen in the typical residential home sale where simultaneously a seller’s loan is paid off and a buyer takes out a new loan as ownership is transferred by deed.
2. The second is where a new loan secured by real estate is taken out, but there is not a change in ownership of the underlying property. This is the situation in the typical mortgage refinancing or second mortgage transaction.

The relative strength of the second type of lending activity can be quantified by comparing the ratio of deeds of trust to deeds in a period. Relatively more deeds of trust signify increasing refinance of mortgage loans.

Since the autumn of 2019, there has been a significant increase in the second type of lending activity. The following chart shows the continuing wide gap between deeds of trust and deeds. This gap, compared to a baseline period from 2019 through early 2020, quantifies increasing strength in the mortgage refinance market. Deed volume rose slightly, and Deeds of Trust volume rose in June 2021, but the gap between the two remains consistently wide.

Deeds and Deeds of Trust Number Recorded Monthly 2019 - June 2021

Long-Term Trends in Real Estate Activity

Aggregate value of real estate transactions

The following chart shows the aggregate dollar value of real estate transactions in Wake County for each month from 2019 through year-to-date 2021. Because real estate transactions tend to be seasonal, it is useful to compare monthly results to the corresponding month of prior years.

Aggregate Value Transferred by Dollar Value Year and Month - June 2021

Aggregate value of real estate transactions - linear

The following chart shows the aggregate dollar value of real estate transfers in Wake County linearly (month by month) from January 2019 through year-to-date 2021. Because real estate transactions tend to be seasonal, this information should be evaluated in conjunction with the year over year comparison is shown in the preceding chart.

Aggregate Value of Transactions Monthly 2019 - June 2021

Deed volume

The following chart shows the number of deeds recorded in Wake County for each month from 2019 through year-to-date 2021. Numbers of deeds recorded reflect the velocity of real estate activity without regard to the dollar value of a transaction. The number of deeds includes transfers where monetary consideration did not change hands, such as transfers within a family.

Real estate lending

This chart shows the number of deeds of trust recorded in Wake County for each month from 2019 through year-to-date 2021. A deed of trust is the legal instrument used in North Carolina to secure a loan with real estate used as collateral. Numbers of deeds of trust recorded reflect the velocity of lending transactions involving real estate without regard to the dollar amount of the loan.

Original source can be found here.