The National Association of Realtors reports today that sales of vacation and investment homes slipped in 2008. In a major resort market like Myrtle Beach, this information hits a little closer to home than in other areas of the country. The NAR report indicates that sales of investment and vacation homes slipped to 30% of all new and existing home purchases in 2008.  This percentage was broken down to 21% purchased as investment homes, the same percentage as 2007, and 9% purchased as vacation homes, as opposed to 12% in 2007.

The total share of second homes in 2007 was 33% and the peak year so far was 2005 when 40% of all existing and new home sales were second homes.

One interesting bit of information reported was that more than 4 out 10 of the investment buyers and more than 3 our of 10 vacation home buyers paid cash for their properties indicating that portfolio diversification is driving some of these investment purchases. If that is the case, we should be able to see more of these types of purchases in the near future.