The Memphis area’s median home price saw a small decrease in the first quarter of 2024, according to data released by the Memphis Area Association of Realtors.
The median sales price decreased from $196,000 in the first quarter of 2023 to $189,000 in the same period this year, a 3.6% change. The association’s report includes data from Shelby, Tipton and Fayette counties.
Joel Hobson, principal broker and owner of Hobson Realtors, said the small overall decrease can be attributed to the market finally nearing some stability after the COVID pandemic. One aspect of the market that is evening out is interest rates.
“It’s going to be kind of an up-and-down situation on interest rates, I believe,” Hobson said. “I think these kind of interest rates that we have in the 6 to 7 (percent) range are probably going to become the new normal at some point.”
Hobson said that while he didn’t personally notice the small median decrease, relatively little change in home prices, up or down, is a good thing for both buyers and sellers.
“Most people that sell also buy,” Hobson said. “It’s great when they sell, but if they don’t know where they’re going to go, they end up not putting their house on the market because they don’t think they can find a house. So a more even market… is going to be good for everybody.”
Hobson’s overall assessment of the market in Memphis is a positive one, for both current residents and those looking to move to the Bluff City.
“Memphis is still the least expensive major city in the country to buy a house,” he said. “And people are figuring that out from all over the country.”
Here is a closer look at Memphis neighborhoods and the prices changes they saw in the first quarter.
TIPS FOR HOMEBUYERS:Thinking about buying your first home? What to know before your home-buying journey begins
Memphis-area home price decreases by neighborhood
Fortunately for Memphis buyers, several neighborhoods saw decreases in the median sales price over the first quarter of 2024. The data compares prices from January to March 2024 to the same period in 2023.
- Berclair had a modest decrease, going from a median price of $95,000 to $89,000, a 6.3% change.
- East Memphis saw a decrease of 2.4%, going from $205,000 to $200,000.
- Raleigh saw a 2.0% decrease, with the median price going from $148,000 to $145,000.
- Whitehaven saw the median price slightly drop from $116,300 to $114,750, a 1.6% decrease.
Memphis-area home price increases by neighborhood
Other Memphis neighborhoods saw increases in median sales price, although most were small increases. The data once again compares prices from January to March 2024 to the same period in 2023.
- South Memphis saw the largest increase to the median sales price in the city at 11.9%, up from $65,000 to $72,750. The area still remains the cheapest to buy in in the city.
- Southwind’s median price went up from $321,905 to $346,000, an increase of 7.5%.
- Midtown’s median price increased 3.4% increase, going up from $164,250 to $169,900.
- Hickory Hill saw a 1.6% increase, as the median price went from $172,250 to $175,000.
- Frayser had a 1.1% increase, with the price going from $90,000 to $91,000.
- Parkway Village had negligible increase, as the median price only went up from $120,000 to $120,450, or 0.4%.
Jacob Wilt is a reporter for The Commercial Appeal. You can reach him atjacob.wilt@commercialappeal.com.
McLOUD — A popular camp for people with special needs was displaced from its longtime home at St. Gregory’s University, then shuttered through long stretches of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But, the beloved monk and Catholic priest who started the program never lost hope, and now his Camp Benedictine is experiencing a rebirth of sorts in its new, spacious home.
“We prayed to God, and I’m just thrilled,” the Rev. Paul Zahler said.
Despite the litany of setbacks, Zahler, 89, is watching the camp come to life again on a former church campground in McLoud. His determination, along with the work of a small but resilient staff, numerous volunteers and generous donors, helped get the program moved to a place where it can thrive.
Oklahoma businessman and philanthropist Gene Rainbolt is one of the people who jumped in to help. He said he learned about Zahler’s programs for people with special needs when he lived in Shawnee for more than two decades, beginning in 1966.
“Father Paul had an equine program and a swimming program on St. Gregory’s campus so I knew about this all these years,” said Rainbolt, who currently lives in Oklahoma City. “They do remarkable work with children that really need help.”
Amit Gumman, a Camp Benedictine board member, said it has been wonderful to welcome back longtime campers while introducing the program to newcomers.
“You hear a lot of laughter here and there’s a lot of joy,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of struggles and challenges, but we made it. It’s kind of divine intervention.”
‘It’s just been a blessing’
Zahler, a Minnesota native, moved to Shawnee in 1950 to attend (now defunct) St. Gregory’s High School. Shawnee’s St. Gregory’s Abbey and St. Gregory’s University, were both founded by Benedictine monks, and Zahler knew he had arrived at a place where he could play high school and collegiate sports while also pursuing his priestly vocation. He became a Benedictine monk at St. Gregory’s Abbey in 1956, and he remains a part of the monastic community. He was ordained as a priest in 1962.
Zahler founded the nonprofit National Institute on Developmental Delays (NIDD) at St. Gregory’s in the 1960s, and Camp Benedictine was started in 1972.
He said he was swimming in the university pool when he realized that it would be a good place to work with people with developmental delays. He started working with children at the university’s child development center, which opened in 1976, and with the inception of Camp Benedictine, he expanded his holistic approach to helping people from ages 8 to 80 with special needs. Zahler said the camp became a year-round camp offered one weekend a month in the 1990s. The nonprofit Home Integration eventually became an umbrella organization for Zahler’s programming.
When St. Gregory’s closed in 2017, Zahler and the camp’s loyal staff and volunteers packed up and moved items used for the child development program and Camp Benedictine.
Virginia Reeves serves as the program’s longtime administrative director and camp co-director with her daughter, Marcy Reeves. She said they found office space in Shawnee, and were able to relocate from St. Gregory’s to a Christian children’s camp in Pink, which served as a much-needed temporary location for some programming. But everyone involved with Camp Benedictine knew that its specific needs and special clientele meant a more permanent home had to be found.
They found what they were looking for in the 40-acre former church campground in McLoud. Reeves and other Camp Benedictine leaders said the location is large enough to host retreats for campers with special needs, and there is plenty of room for Zahler’s vision of a swimming pool, basketball court and volleyball court. She said the camp’s leaders also hope to eventually use a horse barn at the back of the property to restart the popular equine program, all when more funds are raised.
Reeves said a building that once housed a camp concession stand was transformed into a nurse’s station for the camp nurse. Two newly constructed buildings include a Camp Benedictine retreat center for campers and a multipurpose building for meals and other indoor activities.
Camp Benedictine is listed in the Oklahoma Rehabilitation Services’ Disability Resource Guide, a comprehensive listing of more than 2,500 disability and social services programs, said Jody Harlan, a department spokeswoman. Reeves said parents and caregivers of people with special needs have been calling on a regular basis to ask when the year-round camp weekends would be starting again, and it’s been exciting to tell them that the program has returned.
“It’s just been a blessing,” Reeves said at the recent spring camp. “We have 32 (campers) here today, and we’ve been trying to get the word out now that we’ve started again.”
Jose Muprappallil and Mohan Chandran are also longtime leaders and supporters of Home Integration and Camp Benedictine. Muprappallil said the nonprofit was grateful to Garcia Construction and the city of McLoud for their graciousness toward the camp organization. Chandran said it’s important to note that the nonprofit launched by Zahler provides recreation for campers but ultimately helps teach them skills to help enhance their lives and, for some, gain employment.
‘Father Paul’s kids’
Activities during the recent camp weekend included St. Patrick’s Day arts and crafts, a take-home planter box project, outdoor games and whimsical “leprechaun hunt.” The group also made cards for a camper who missed the weekend event due to illness.
Zahler spoke to campers and volunteers as he walked around the multipurpose building before lunch was served. He beamed with pride as several campers hugged him and talked to him about their crafts and camp activities. Zahler said about 40,000 people have participated in Camp Benedictine over the years.
“They’re my family,” he said.
Longtime Camp Benedictine volunteer Kathi Yeager spread cheer, talking with several campers whom she called out by name. She said many of them had been part of the program for many years, spanning from childhood to adulthood.
One of them was Russell M. who started coming to the camp weekend retreats when he was about 8 years old. Yeager said he is currently in his 40s.
“They light up like Santa Claus is here when he comes into the room,” she said of Zahler.
She said she started volunteering for the camp while she was a child psychology major at St. Gregory’s in the late 1980s and she took one of Zahler’s classes.
Yeager said the camp is great because campers love it and parent and caregivers may go and have a time of respite and they don’t worry because their loved ones are in good hands.
“It’s kind of mind-boggling that this little camp that started in a corner of the gym at St. Greg’s is still going on,” she said.
“It’s all because of Father Paul, the power of his vision, prayer and the passion of the people who are here today.”
To learn more
The next Camp Benedictine weekend is April 19-21. For information about Camp Benedictine and the National Institute on Developmental Delays, go to https://nidd.us/programs/camp.
DAYTONA BEACH − A new national ranking lists Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach as the ninth-slowest metro area in the country to sell a house.
The ranking by CreditNews.com comes as a surprise to P.W. Mabry, president of the Daytona Beach Area Association of Realtors.
“We’re selling properties like crazy right now,” said Mabry, an agent with Re/Max Signature in Ormond Beach. “Our numbers (volume of homes sold) are going up.”
How did they come up with the ranking?
New York-based CreditNews.com based its ranking of the nation’s 10 fastest and 10 slowest metro areas to sell a house on data from real estate website Zillow.com, which found that it took a median of 39 days for a listing to be put under contract to be sold in the “Deltona” metro area in January.
“When referring to ‘Deltona,’ we meant the entire metro area, encompassing Deltona–Daytona Beach–Ormond Beach,” confirmed Dan Runkevicius, chief editor for CreditNow.com in an email. “The data was sourced from Zillow’s ‘for-sale inventory’ data set.’ Housing inventory was then adjusted to account for the size of the metro population.”
Florida Realtors Association data showed the “median time to contract” for existing single-family homes in Volusia County in January was actually 41 days, according to a copy of the report provided to The Daytona Beach News-Journal by the West Volusia Association of Realtors.
The Daytona Beach Area Association of Realtors reported that the median time to contract for properties listed by its members was 53 days.
The statewide median time to contract in January was 43 days, according to the Florida Realtors Association.
Nationally, the median time to contract for homes to be put under contract was 36 days in January, according to the National Association of Realtors.
It’s based on a ‘Zestimate’
Mabry said he takes data provided by Zillow with a grain of salt.
“(Real estate) brokers must click on a button that allows Zillow to get their information,” he said. “I know for a fact that not all brokers click on that button.”
“Zillow also has in small print on its reports that when they give you an appraisal value for a property that they call it a ‘Zestimate.’ That’s so they can’t be sued (if the information is incorrect),” said Mabry. “It’s their personal opinion.”
“We have people tell us all the time that ‘Zillow says my house should sell for a half-million dollars,’ but that’s not necessarily the case,” he added. “Their ‘Zestimates’ are only within 5% of the actual sale price of a home about half of the time.”
John Adams, president of Adams, Cameron & Co. Realtors in Daytona Beach, also expressed skepticism regarding Zillow’s latest ranking for the Deltona metro area.
“Zillow has a very good statistics team and generally produces good results, however, in this case, I can’t agree,” said Adams.
Adams, Cameron has 300 agents in eight offices in Volusia and Flagler counties, the most of any real estate brokerage in the combined two-county area.
Local market back to pre-pandemic levels?
Florida Realtors Association data for the Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach area, which encompasses the combined Volusia County-Flagler County area, showed that the median time to contract for homes locally rose to 33 days in 2023, up from 13 days and 11 days in 2022 and 2021, respectively.
Despite the increase, the median time to contract remained lower than in 2019 (41 days), the year before the COVID-19 pandemic-fueled real estate boom in Florida began.
“I like the (Florida Realtors) view over time, because it is more objective,” said Adams.
What CreditNews had to say about its rankings
The report by CreditNews.com stated that its study “reveals a major shift in best-selling markets since the onset of Covid. None of the top fastest-selling metros pre-COVID remain on the list today, and vice versa.
“Part of the reason behind this realignment is different inventory levels across the nation − which, we found, has a strong connection with how fast listings sell.”
What do the latest local housing numbers say?
According to countywide data provided by the West Volusia Association of Realtors, Realtors in Volusia County sold 509 homes in January, up 3% from 494 a year ago. The median sale price rose to $350,000, up 4.8% from $333,990 in January 2023. The inventory of active listings climbed 21.8% year-over-year to 2,384, compared with 1,957 a year ago.
Still, the month’s supply for Volusia, meaning how long in theory it would take to deplete the inventory if no new listings are added, remained tight at 3.3 months, compared with 2.5 a year ago.
The statewide month’s supply in January was 3.8, according to Florida Realtors.
According to the National Association of Realtors, that means the local real estate market remains tilted somewhat in favor of sellers. “Historically, six months of supply is associated with moderate price appreciation, and a lower level of month’s supply tends to push prices up more rapidly,” the NAR website states.
Who else made the fastest and slowest lists?
According to CreditNews.com, the 10 fastest metro areas to sell a house in January, along with the median days on market, were as follows: 1. Hartford, Connecticut (8 days); 2. tie between Rochester and Syracuse, New York, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (9 days); 5. tie between Richmond, Virginia, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and New Haven, Connecticut (11 days); 8. tie between Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts, and Columbus, Ohio (12 days).
Jacksonville was the other Florida metro area, along with Deltona to make the 10 slowest metro areas list: 1. Austin, Texas (66 days); 2. McAllen, Texas (53 days); 3. Poughkeepsie, New York (51 days); 4. San Antonio, Texas (49 days); 5. New Orleans, Louisiana (48 days); 6. Jacksonville, Florida (42 days); 7. tie between Cape Coral, Florida, and Colorado Springs, Colorado (41 days); 9. Deltona, Florida (39 days); 10. New York, New York (37 days).
Why do some homes take longer to sell?
While some homes locally sell within days of being listed, others can go months without receiving an offer, often resulting in a lowering of the asking price.
“When homes sit on the market, there can be a lot of reasons,” said Mabry. “In some cases, it could be a property that requires extensive repairs or updating. Being over-priced is almost always the No. 1 reason. You have sellers out there trying to get top dollar for their home, in some cases against the advice of their Realtor.”
Huntington Bank is selling three Downtown buildings, two of them historic, as part of a plan to redevelop the properties.
The bank announced Thursday that it is partnering with the Columbus Downtown Development Corp. to find buyers for the buildings who will overhaul them.
“Spurring new uses for these buildings signifies Huntington’s commitment to creating a more vibrant, livable city,” Steve Steinour, Huntington president and CEO, said in a news release.
“Each of these buildings holds a rich history in downtown Columbus, and we believe redevelopment is key to ensure downtown Columbus thrives for years to come. As the hometown bank, we will maintain our large presence at Huntington Center.”
Huntington plans to seek requests for proposals from developers for the three buildings:
- Huntington Bank Building, 17 S. High St., a 12-story building. The oldest part of the building, called the Harrison Building, was built in 1903-1905, and was expanded in 1925 to include the bank’s striking main lobby.
- The Wyandotte Building at 21 W. Broad St., an 11-story building completed in 1898 and designed by famed Chicago architect Daniel Burnham. The building, on the National Register of Historic Places, is considered the first skyscraper in Columbus.
- The Huntington Plaza building at 37 W. Broad St., a 12-story building erected in 1967 in what was then a modern concrete style.
“Certainly the Wyandotte Building is wonderful,” said Susan Keeny, preservation services director for Columbus Landmarks preservation association. “Whenever a building is up for sale, we always worry. The best we hope for is that a preservation-minded developer acquires it.”
In a news release, Huntington said the 200 bank employees in the three buildings will be relocated to one of the bank’s other buildings. Huntington said it will maintain a branch Downtown.
The bank did not say how much of the buildings are occupied or whether it would vacate the buildings before they are sold.
Huntington also did not say why it is taking this step now beyond noting that it is selling the buildings “as part of a broader national push toward revitalizing downtown office buildings to suit modern needs,” according to the news release.
“We are honored to work with Huntington to provide input and perspective into the (requests for proposals) process and ensure we find the ideal future owners of these buildings,” Greg Davies, CEO of the CDDC, said in the release. “These are premier locations offering unique opportunities for mixed-use spaces, such as retail and housing benefitting both Downtown residents and workers.”
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Huntington’s decision to sell reflects the continued challenges of filling office buildings, many of which have yet to recover from 2020, when COVID sent workers home.
About 23% of central Ohio office space was vacant at the end of 2023, according to the commercial real-estate company CBRE. In downtown Columbus, about 21% of office space is empty, including space that is being sublet. Despite an uptick in office leases at the end of last year, Downtown ended 2023 with 277,794 less square feet of occupied offices than in the previous year, according to CBRE.
The most obvious redevelopment possibility for the Huntington buildings would be residences. Two Downtown high-rises are already being totally or partially converted into apartments: the former PNC building (now called Preston Centre) at 155 E. Broad St., and the Continental Centre building at 150 E. Gay St.
In addition, owners have submitted plans to convert nearly all of the Chase Tower, at 100 E. Broad St., into apartments.
“Certainly this is a trend we’re seeing across growing metropolitan downtowns, where there is selective redevelopment of what I consider to be prime real estate,” said Michael Copella, senior managing director of the Columbus office of CBRE. “This is exactly what cities should be doing, to identify buildings for reuse.”
While redevelopment would most likely focus on residences, Copella said other uses, such as hotels or retail/restaurants could be in the mix.
“There’s a need for hospitality Downtown, and when you look at other successful mixed-use developments Downtown, they have hospitality, like the Junto or the LeVeque,” Copella added. “I do look at this move as a positive. It’s very rare to get Downtown sites, especially with such history and character, in proximity to other great developments.”
Amy Taylor, president of the CDDC, noted that demand for Downtown apartments remains strong. The city’s Downtown Strategic Plan calls for 40,000 people to live Downtown by 2040, up from about 12,000 now.
“The strategic plan prioritized increasing residential, so we know there’s a market there, but developers will review the art of the possible given the specific nature of each building,” Taylor said.
jweiker@dispatch.com
@JimWeiker