12/03/07-12/09/07 Weekly MLS Statistics; land investing article...

Good Morning!

First week of December figures are out. Nothing exciting; these are typical of the past few months, which are typically sluggish. The amount of pendings and new contracts is likely to slow down, as we don't see a lot of closings planned before the end of the year. I like that they are holding pace with October/November Sales. If December can hold its ground, than we can expect First quarter to be better.

Pending Sales: 3946 ( +112 from last week)

Pending + AWC: 4375 ( + 89 from last week)

Closed Escrows: 546 ( -614 from last week)

Active Listings: 56336 ( -113 from last week)


Closed escrows is always down after the end of a month, so nothing to get excited about. Its actually not a bad number. The pending have risen, so that is showing some positive momentum going into the late holiday season. The amount of Active listings is sliding a bit, which is encouraging, but that number could shoot up after the first of the year when many homes go on the market traditionally, so I am a little guarded about that one. We have shaved well over a 1000 listings in the last two weeks, though, so it is good, if only temporary news. However, as first quarter is traditionally a stronger buying period, home sales could start eating away at the listings, even if there is a little bit of a rush of homes to market in January. I do think that much of the surge of homes has already hit the market, so we may not see any surge at all. Its hard to tell, though, about the mortgage problem. Hopefully we have seen the worst of the listing surge.

I also found this article very interesting....it is interesting that we are seeing news about these things now. I do think that there will be land buyers out there testing the waters again in early 2008. They will be looking for the best deals they can find, of course, but I do think we will start seeing some activity, if home sales continue to strengthen in the early parts of first quarter.

New home builders will recover first, as I have said. The sales for the year are lagging 2007 substantially, especially due to a poor third quarter, but the sales have been consistent, and it looks like that was maybe the baseline for sales, and we will see that number go higher in the new year, as prices and mortgage rates have fallen substantially, and mortgage availability is a little more consistent again, at least for entry level priced homes.