Realtors say local market still healthy despite national slump

Despite a nationwide downturn in the housing market, the consensus among several Conway realtors is that the city's real estate market is, for the most part, healthy.

To understand where the real estate market is now, Pam McDowell, principal broker of Pam McDowell Properties, said, you have to understand where it has been over the last few years.

From 2004 to 2006, McDowell said, Conway realtors enjoyed an abnormally successful market, but in 2006, the market began to slow down, to some extent as a result of the national subprime loan crisis.

The number of homes sold in Faulkner County dropped over 14.5 percent from 2006 to 2007, though the average value of homes sold increased somewhat.

"When people say that we're not experiencing any of that slump," McDowell said, "the numbers won't bear that out."

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What the numbers do bear out, she said, is a return to pre-2004, pre-housing boom normalcy for Conway's real estate market.

"The problem is, we get accustomed to the faster rate of growth," she said.

Richard Henley, owner/broker of ERA Henley Real Estate, agreed with McDowell.

"We had some abnormally good years and the pendulum definitely did swing back," Henley said. "But we're very close to what I would consider a normal market for the area."

What kept the pendulum from swinging back with the same force it showed during the "boom years," Henley said, was "all the good positives that we have."

The blossoming natural gas industry, the stable employment base offered by the city's institutions of higher learning and industries and quality public schools, he said, make Conway "an easy sell."

Mitch Hart, president of HartLand Development, agreed with McDowell and Henley.

"Our economy here in Conway is not driven by one engine," Hart said. "We have a lot of steady drivers. We don't have the 20- to 30-percent increases in prices you might see in places like Tampa and Orlando or California, but you don't see the 20-percent drops either.

In some other parts of the country, they've got foreclosures like crazy. In the real estate field you hear markets are down 30, 40, 50 percent and depreciation around 30 percent. I don't think we really had anything that drastic happen in Arkansas as far as the market goes. Arkansas as a whole has done well, considering."

The three realtors did say that finding a home in Conway under $100,000 has become increasingly difficult over the last few years.

"You can still find some homes in the $80 to $90 range," Henley said, "but they're few and far between and if they're priced properly they'll sell just immediately, in a matter of days. The price of an area is determined mainly by new construction.

"If a new house sells for $100 per square foot, a 5-year-old house will sell for about $90 per square foot. Construction prices went up so fast in the first part of this decade and you can't build a new home for under $100,000 now."

McDowell said the rising cost of development within the city limits of Conway has meant finding a newly-constructed starter home under $100,000 is now "impossible."

At the same time, McDowell said, when it comes to more upscale homes "there's a higher inventory than we would care to have," though the recent purchase of some larger, more expensive homes is an encouraging early sign for 2008.

(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by e-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1238. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)