CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A major sign the economy continues to strengthen in Charlotte is that buying homes is becoming more competitive.
Now, people who lost homes during the foreclosure crisis are ready to own again.
LINK: 9 things to know when buying a home
Floyd Davis remembers seven or eight years ago when a lot of real estate signs in neighborhoods read foreclosure, instead of for sale.
His company, Community Link, counsels people on homeownership and how to recover from homeownership mistakes.
"It was rough for those individuals because they had worked so hard to get a home," Davis said.
For those homebuyers who bought homes they couldn't afford, they have spent many years repairing their credit.
So the so-called "boomerang buyers" are ready to own again.
The Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord area is one of the top metro areas likely to see a large share of boomerang buyers between this year and 2022, according to a report from Realty-Trac.
"We have some customers now that we're working with them on their credit and trying to help them go through the process so they can get back into homeownership," Davis said.
They have steep competition right now.
"Those boomerang buyers are in the same buying pool as first-time homebuyers, including millennials," Davis said. "They're all going after interest rates that are rising, lower money down, the new loan products that are being offered now."
The area is only seeing a taste of a busy buying season for the area, the president of the Charlotte Regional Realtors Association, Maren Brisson-Kuester, said.
"We will see it pick up in spring," Brisson-Kuester said. "There's no doubt about it."
But this time around, Davis wants the boomerang buyers to get back on track the right way.
"This time they can get good advice and not only become a homebuyer but be a homeowner 10 years, 20 years, 30 years down the road," Davis said.
The average price for a house in the Charlotte area is just under $200,000 and boomerang buyers are looking for homes that cost $300,000 or less, Brisson Kuester said.
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