Boomerang Buyers Return to Charlotte Housing Market

 

Charlotte is among the 22 metropolitan areas with more than 250,000 residents that will probably experience a return to the housing market by those people who left their homes due to foreclosure during the housing crisis.

Based on RealtyTrac, the Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia areas currently have top three conditions, which are sure to tempt these boomerang buyers. These conditions include a high percentage of housing units lost because of foreclosure, affordable home prices suitable for median income earners, as well as the steady or increasing population of Generation X, individuals born from 1965 to 1976, along with baby boomers, those born between 1945 and 1964.

The data analytics firm believes that these two generations are highly likely to re-enter the housing market especially now that the first batch of homeowners who lost their home to foreclosure or short sale during the housing bust have passed the conventional seven-year window necessary to fix their credit and be qualified to apply for a mortgage.

The number of these boomerang homebuyers continues to increase, making them likely to purchase a home thanks to the normalization of their credit.

At present, within the Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia region, there are approximately 46,858 probable boomerang buyers, a number equal to 6.4 percent of the total housing units available according to RealtyTrac’s data. Affordability currently accounts at 22.5 percent.

Between 2007 and 2013, the Charlotte region saw a 1.9 percent increase in the number of baby boomers and Generation X.

There are also several metropolitan areas in Florida that saw a surge in boomerang homebuyers such as Fort Myers, Orlando, Daytona Beach, Melbourne, Sarasota, Lakeland, Ocala and Tampa. Other cities include Las Vegas, Des Moines, Iowa, Chattanooga and Knoxville, Tennessee, Columbus, Georgia and Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

RealtyTrac forecasts that nationwide, there are about 7.3 million pending boomerang buyers representing 5.5 percent of the total available housing units. As for the house payments nationally, the average is 26.8 percent of income.

Between 2007 and 2013, the number of baby boomers and generation dropped 1.5 percent.

The Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Arizona area currently has the highest number of potential boomerang homebuyers, which is nearly 349,000. This region was hit badly during the housing crisis, followed by Miami, Detroit and Chicago with each place having more than 300,000 potential boomerang purchasers.