Your inside source for real estate, development and construction information serving the counties of Mecklenburg, Union & Iredell VOLUME 106 NUMBER 23 ■ MECKTIMES.COM
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Only 60% of sales hires stay with a company at least 6 months Page 2
Second home prices rise 20% year-over-year nationwide Page 3
Wage gains continue for workers of U.S. small businesses Page 4
NOVAK: 16-year-old tangles with business owner Page 5
ENNICO: One more thing America needs from its media
Home sales, seller profits dip across U.S. in first quarter of 2022 as price increases slow ATTOM has released its first-quarter 2022 U.S. Home Sales Report, which shows that profit margins on medianpriced single-family home sales across the United States dipped to 47.2 percent – the first quarterly decline since late 2019 and the largest in a decade. In a sign that the nationwide housingmarket boom may be slowing, the latest profit margin was down from 51.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021. While profit margins often decrease during the relatively slow Winter homebuying season, the latest dip of more than four percentage points marked the first quarterly decline since the fourth quarter of 2019 and the largest since the first quarter of 2011. The report reveals that the typical
return on investment remained historically high, easily topping the 37.5 percent level recorded in the first quarter of 2021 and almost 20 points above the 29.4 percent figure from the first quarter of 2019. Gross profits, while also near record highs, followed a similar pattern in the first quarter of 2022. The typical singlefamily home sale across the country generated a gross first-quarter profit of $103,000, down from $107,187 in the fourth quarter of last year, although still well above $75,001 a year earlier. “Home prices simply can’t continue to go up as rapidly as they have for the past few years,” said Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence for ATTOM. “The combination of higher
prices, rising mortgage rates, and the highest rates of inflation in 40 years may be pricing some prospective buyers out of the market, which means we may begin to see lower sales numbers. Ultimately, as affordability worsens, price appreciation should slow down, and we may even see modest price corrections in some markets.” The lower gross profits came as the national median home price increased just 1.7 percent, from $315,000 in the fourth quarter of 2021 to $320,500 in the first quarter of this year. That marked the ninth straight quarterly record and was up 16.5 percent from the first quarter of 2021. But the modest quarterly gain
PLEASE SEE HOME SALES PRICES ON PAGE 6
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Stocks gain ground, clawing back a piece of last week’s drop Page 7
“The state of small business employment remains strong, with wages increasing for 11 consecutive months and job growth near an eightyear high.“ Martin Mucci, Paychex
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