ASHEVILLE — The popular travel websiteTripAdvisor has named the city one of its top 10 food and wine destinations, putting it in the same company as cities including New York and San Francisco.

The website notes Asheville’s focus on eating locally and supporting sustainable agriculture.

“This town of less than 100,000 people has 17 farmers’ markets, and the local restaurant scene is all about taking advantage of seasonal produce,” states a blurb on the site.

Charles Triber, owner of The Junction restaurant in the River Arts District, is a prime example. The restaurant opened
earlier this year with a focus on locally sourced food, and meats and dairy that are humanely raised and hormone- and antibiotic-free.

“The dependence on preservatives and artificialness in food has become the norm, and we really feel that it doesn’t have to be like that,” Triber said.

“We bring in raw product and work with local distributors and farmers, and we try to show people that that approach can not
only help the community, but the food tastes better,” Triber said. “You’re
spending your dollar better, and you’re benefiting nutritionally.”

The Orchards Restaurant in the Renaissance Asheville Hotel is another example. Chef Jessie Teasdale has a menu that features mostly locally grown produce.

“By using produce from local markets, we’re greatly reducing our carbon footprint and supporting local farmers,” Teasdale said.

TripAdvisor also highlighted the marketing effort by the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority to promote Asheville as a “foodtopian” culture. With creative independent restaurants, farmers’ markets and microbreweries, the city stands with other major cities, according to the website.

On November 2nd, the Asheville Citizen-Times reported that Buncombe County saw our jobless rate drop from 8.4% to 7.9%. Compare that to the national unemployment rate, which is 9.1% (according to Google Public Data website). We’ve had some job losses over the past year – such as the Volvo Construction Equipment Sales and Rents headquarters moving to Pennsylvania over the next year. But, we have had enough gains to offset and improve our jobless rate.

Most of the gain seems to be in tourism but we according to Michael Brown, an economist with Wells Fargo, there has been a gain of 500 manufacturing jobs in the last month.

Other good news is that home sales are up in the Asheville area. Sales of existing home rose 5.9% in October. Haywood, Henderson and Transylvania also did even better at 9.1 percent.

I realize that we aren’t anywhere near out of the woods yet, but encouraging news is always welcomed. If you are a buyer, don’t hesitate waiting for the market to fall more. Interest rates are under 4% and I believe we have hit the bottom in Asheville and Buncombe County. Our median home price has risen, ever so slightly, over the last couple of months.

If you are a seller in this market, give me a call to discuss how you can capitalize on the improving situation. If you are a buyer, it’s a great time to make that move – low interest rates, and plenty of great homes to choose from. Call today for a consultation.

ASHEVILLE — Sales of existing homes during the third quarter in Buncombe County outpaced sales during the same period a year ago, and some in the real estate industry say they see signs of housing market stability.

Sales for July through September climbed 28.7 percent in Buncombe and rose 22 percent in a four-county region, according to figures from N.C. Mountains Multiple Listing Service.

The timing of federal tax credits for homebuyers dramatically depressed home sales in the third quarter of 2010, making comparisons with 2011 somewhat deceptive.

But third-quarter figures this year also were up 7.3 percent over the same period in 2009 in Buncombe County and 1.7 percent in Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson and Transylvania counties together. Sales are still well below levels seen during the middle of the last decade.

The figures may mark a return to a slow but steady improvement in the local market, said Kirk Booth, head of Kirk H. Booth Realty and president of the Asheville Board of Realtors. “Asheville is in high demand, and people know that it’s time to get back in.”

But demand has yet to catch up to supply, real estate analyst Don Davies cautioned.

Sales so far in 2011 in Western North Carolina are just about where they were at
this point in 2010, he said.

“We’re still floating around 2005 prices. The foreclosures are still a big part of the sales,” Davies said. “We’re just not selling expensive homes.”

The median price of a home sold in County in September was $194,000, down from $207,500 in September 2010.

More than three-quarters of the homes sold in Buncombe and other nearby counties went for less than $300,000, said Steven Dozier, a Realtor with Prudential Lifestyle Realty in Hendersonville.

“The lower end of the market is driving any and everything we do right now,” he said.

Dozier and others said many of those sales are to investors who will rent out the houses they buy.People who might have bought a home a few years ago can’t get a loan now or simply can’t afford to buy and must rent instead, Dozier said.

With prices down and foreclosures resulting in a good supply of less expensive homes, “It has made it an excellent time to buy investment property if you have cash and goodcredit,” he said.

Davies also said investors are picking up good deals.“We’ve got these banks that are selling these houses that should be selling for $180,000, $190,000, and they’re pricing them at $119,000,” he said.

The result is that other sellers cannot be aggressive when setting the asking price for their home, Booth said.

“The units that are priced right are selling. The ones that are not are sitting,” he said.

Both Booth and Davies said the dramatic slowdown in newhomeconstruction could eventually provide some support for existing home prices. The number of new homes permitted last year in Buncombe County was only a little more than a quarter of the figure for 2007.As the population grows, that will eventually result in more demand for existing homes, Booth and Davies said.

In the meantime, Booth said any good economic news would be especially helpful to the housing market.

“The one thing that we have to have is more consumer confidence in the overall economy,” he said.

Asheville Citizens Times
Mark Barrett
October 04. 2009 12:15AM

The large supply of expensive homes on the market in the area seems to finally be taking a toll on home values.

Federal figures suggest there has been modest erosion in home values in middle and lower price ranges locally, but experts say those selling a house for more than $250,000 to $300,000 may have to settle for significantly lower prices than they once would have.

Values in the Asheville area did not rise as rapidly earlier this decade as in some hot markets around the country and have not fallen as rapidly either.

However, there also have not been as many signs of a turnaround in the local market as there have been nationally.

“This recession came here a lot later,” said John Carroll, owner/broker at Century 21 All Seasons in Asheville. “We’re just on a different time schedule.”

“Maybe we have that syndrome where we fell later than everybody else and we’re going to rise later than everybody else,” said Don Davies, a local real estate analyst.

Still falling?

The number of existing homes sold through the Multiple Listing Service in Buncombe County was down 8.9 percent in August from August 2008. Sales were down about 25 percent for the first eight months of the year, although the rate of decline has been slower in recent months.

Davies said it appears that sales for September will be roughly the same or a little greater than in September 2008. The last time that sales for a month in Buncombe were higher than the same month a year ago was October 2006.

National existing home sales have been improving gradually since spring, although they dipped 2.7 from July to August on a seasonally adjusted basis, the National Association of Realtors reported recently.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency says home values fell 1.1 percent during the second quarter of this year and dropped 1.2 percent for the 12 months that ended June 30. That’s less than the 2.4 percent decline for the quarter seen nationally and 4 percent annual decline.

The figures are based on appraisals for purchases or refinancings involving loans of no more than $417,000 in Asheville, so they don’t include values for most of the area’s highest-priced homes.

That’s where some say values are falling the fastest — and may fall some more.

Values in neighborhoods with moderately priced homes like Oakley and West Asheville “have done OK” and have not moved much up or down recently, said Dave Earnhardt, owner/manager of Earnhardt & Associates Appraisers.

But in the upper end of the market, there are “so many fewer sales now that it’s sometimes tough to do a decent appraisal,” Earnhardt said.

Take your pick

The slow sales pace of expensive homes is not for a lack of properties on the market. There were 280 single-family homes listed for sale at $1 million or more at the end of August, according to figures from local Realtor Scott Raines. That’s more than a nine-year supply at current sales rates, a little less than it was earlier in the year but still far above what experts consider to be equilibrium.

The median price of an existing home sold in Buncombe County fell from $225,000 in August 2008 to $187,000 in August of this year, according to the N.C. Mountains Multiple Listing Service. People in the industry say the federal first-time homebuyer tax credit has brought many buyers looking for less expensive homes into the market, a shift that accounts for at least some of the decline.

Carroll said he still sees people looking for an upper-end home, but “they may just not spend as much money. A person who would buy a million-dollar house is buying an $800,000 house.”

Jon Corbin, president of The Buyer’s Agent of Asheville, said prices may continue to fall in the upper price ranges.

“At some point people that have to sell are going to have to sell. You’ve got a lot of spec properties that are in that price range,” he said, referring to homes built without a buyer lined up.

Buyers in general sometimes expect that prices would have fallen here as much as elsewhere, Carroll said.

“People are sort of shocked … when they come here from out of town at our prices,” he said. “They think we’re still too high, but they’re still buying. They’re not buying as much (house), and they’re looking for a discount.”

Improvements in the economy could firm up prices in more moderate price ranges, Carroll said, but it is also possible that some prices have further to fall.

“When you have that many people who have the mindset that they’re going to pay less, it’s really harder to convince them to pay more,” he said.