Happy New Year!

I failed to mention that I would not be updating for the Holidays, so I am sorry for that. I think what is actually more relevant now than those two weeks, which I find to be pretty good news, is that December finished slightly better than November in total sales, with 3428 to 3319. Not a significantly greater number, but I think it shows that we are not tanking anymore, and that this is the baseline for sales, and that we should expect to see some better numbers by February. The other encouraging number, and I am going to temper this right now, because it is early in the New year, and we might see a spike of new listings by the weekend, is the active listings numbers. If you follow my thoughts, you know that I consider this to be a crucial statistic measuring the health of the market. The number of active listings is showing a decrease of some several thousand over the course of December. That is a great sign if the trend continues. On the not so positive side, but not unexpected given the holidays, is the number of pendings is very low. That is a number that usually perks up during the course of the month, as many pendings do close over the last week, and take a large chunk out of pendings. We will watch it, but if it follows normal procedure, the pendings usually start increasing during the first few weeks of the subsequent month. The number of Active w/Contingency has stayed fairly steady through the holidays, and that is a good sign that new contracts continue to come in. As we are at the first of the year, I am just going to start fresh, and not give comparisons to the previous week.

January 2nd, 2008

Pending Sales: 3125 Trending Down

Pending + A w/C 3571 Trending Down

Closed Escrows in December: 3428 Up from November

Active Listings: 52,213 (Down from 56449 on December 2nd)

If we see active listings slide under 50,000 by the end of January, it would be an incredibly good trend, as we are entering a period (Starting in February) where inventory tends to get eaten up by demand. I don't know if that will happen, given the historical data that many people will put homes on the market in January. That is a historical fact, so this good news could be a statistical aberration if there is a flood of listings, but right now, it looks good. January is often a blah month like December, but we should start seeing the better activity show up in pendings and AWC during January. Last January there were only 4389 sales, and the two years before that were boom years, and not comparable, as they showed sales of 5266 in 2006 and well over 6000 in 2005. In 2004 there were 5118 closings, which was a very good year for sales, and a number to shoot for, but one which we will fall well short of, given current indications. Reaching last year's sales of 4389 would be a worthy goal at this point, and maybe by February, we can start talking about 5000+ sales. Those are the benchmarks that I am looking for before we can start talking market equalization.

Chris