MLS STATS 1/22/08

MLS stats encompassing 1/14/08-1/20/08

New contracts (Active with Contingency) breaches 600 for the week! (620)

Pending Sales: 3,836 ( +180 from last week)

Pending + Active W/C 4,456 ( +242 from last week)

Closed Escrow 665 ( +172 from last week)

Active Listings: 54973 ( +809 from last week)

Monthly Closed as of 1/20/08 1,503



Weekly figures paint an interesting picture. The number of active listings continues to climb in January off its lows at the beginning of the month, but not very sharply nor alarmingly. As I have written before, there is a spike in homes going on the market in January, and so far we have weathered it pretty well. This year, a lot of the homes that would have gone up in January were already on the market, so the spike isn't as noticeable. Its been with us all the while, so to speak. Here is the good news: New activity seems to be on the climb. We have breached the 600 level after reaching the 500 level in AWC contracts just a few weeks ago. We hadn't seen that level since last summer, so there is a great deal of optimism about buyers coming out of their shells. A title company rep that I get info from has been noting her realtor clients stating they they have an increase in activity since the first of the year. Its good, but very early news. Also, as the feds cut rates by 75 basis points this morning, there is some further encouragement for buyers to think about locking in their housing cost for a long time. Rates are below 6% for many people, and that means that home prices are likely to find support at a higher level than if rates were 8%. Remember, most people don't think about houses in actual price they pay, they think about it in terms of monthly cost. How much the cut drives down actual mortgage rates is debatable, as they were already very low, but the news of rate cuts makes people pay attention, and realize how low rates are. It is a good news kind of thing that drives activity.

Other positive signs for January are that pending + Active W/C are climbing for several weeks in a row, the amount of closings as well was a good number for a middle month this past week, and we seem to be matching and most likely surpassing December Sales figures. Its hard to read, how quickly these escrows will close, as many of them didn't open until after the holidays, so I am not going to get too optimistic about January Sales yet. January is typically a slow month for closed escrows for a reason, and the reason is that not many people are writing contracts for houses 12/20- 1/1. Another interesting stat that I would look at is that 12/31/07 was a monday, and given that it was a natural part of the first three weeks of this year, the sales for the first three weeks of the year actually totalled 1769, which is a much healthier number than we experienced in fourth quarter. We still have this full week, plus next week-an end of the month week being the biggest sales week-to go, which should put us in some very positive numbers. Also, February is setting up well, and if we can get the AWC to continue to climb, we might be able to exude some numbers-on-the-ground optimism for the first time in a while.