27616 feeding frenzy

[Chris Martin]

Very seldom have I seen page after page (, , , and of listings that have a listing status of Contingent or New. About 10% out of 60 houses under $190,000 in 27616 have an Active status. What is going on? 

From public record (see sources below), there are a total of 14318 Residential properties in 27616. Since 1/1/2016, looking at just out of town buyers, 221 have bought property according to the "Package Date" (generally the sale date for arms-length transactions) field. There were 1855 total transactions (almost 13% of the total market) since 1/1/2016. This seems like a lot, but I'm not a broker. Perhaps local brokers can put this in perspective across the region. 

Who are these out of town buyers? Here is the count and list of the buyers of 5 or more properties (62 total or 28% of the out-of-town sales)

12 AMH NC PROPERTIES L P
12 CSH PROPERTY ONE
21 FREO NORTH CAROLINA LLC
6 HPA BORROWER 2016
5 NGUYEN, T. (individual)
6 PROPERTY OWNER X LLC (X is 1 or 2)

Of these companies, all but FREO were created in the last year. The companies are foreign registered from CA, AZ, and IL. Of the remaining buyers, a large number are from California, Cary NC, and Wake Forest. One interesting note: most (17) of FREO, CSH, and T. NGUYEN purchases were under $190,000 while most of PROPERTY ONE were over $190,000.

So what's the upshot? I see new companies (<1 year old) jumping in to join the party. Prices are definitely higher and clearly the market shows almost nothing available (almost all property on MLS is Contingent Status) in the sub-$190,000 market. Demand is clearly outstripping supply.

As an owner of property in 27616, my question to BP Nation is 'What do you/we do? Sell and take (in my case more) chips off the table or hold on? Can this $/sq.ft. expansion continue?'

Sources: My own primary research using: shapshot, 7/2/2017; ; Linux scripts; PHP/MySQL scripts/queries