Happy Holidays to all! I would like to start making some more general commentary on the site here, and will make an effort to do so in the the new year, once I get settled into a little better pattern. There is a lot of economic news that I think warrants our attention, and is probably a little more directly linked to the land market then the techy MLS stats that I riff on currently, but I do see this topic as one of the leading indicators for the land market. I will try to get to some of those topics in the future. For now, here are the stats for the week.
Pending Sales: 3,828 ( -118 from last week)
Pending + AWC 4256 ( -119 from last week)
Closed Escrows: 819 ( +273 from last week)
Active Listings: 55,863 ( -473 from last week)
Okay, just a few observations. We are right in the middle of the Holiday season, and that has a lot of effect on the numbers. Interestingly, most of the numbers we are looking at here are doing the right thing. The closed escrows last week was a little bit of a surprise. The pending contracts is down, but it also is not down as far as the increase of closed escrows, meaning there were new contracts replacing those that sold. A good sign. It is also nice to see that the active listings is sliding with some consistency now, whether people are just taking homes off the market or we reached some apex in over-supply, and are now coming off that number permanently, I am not sure, and will not likely know until sometime in first quarter. Still, I think the highest number of actives that I recorded was 57,940 this fall, and we have fallen 3.5% below that total. Not a huge drop, but a 3.5% drop in traditionally the worst quarter of the year gives me some hope. This is where we might start seeing some better looking number in first quarter. An increase in sales to 5000 a month means we could start seeing a reduction in the supply from a 17 month supply to under a 10 month supply within first quarter. The supply burn rate at 5000 homes could go from a 1000 a month to 3000-4000 a month, getting us down into the 40,000's, which would be the harbinger of equalizing the market. This is not an overnight process, but if we can come out of first quarter in the 40,000-45000 actives, I think we could start breathing again. Those are my thoughts on the matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment