MLS STATS DEC. 31- Jan 6th, 2008

Pending Sales: 3347 (+222 from last week)

Pending + Active With Contingency: 3863 (+292 from last week)

Closed Escrows: 599 (N/A)

Active Listings: 53266 (+1053 from last week)

Closed Escrow Month to Date: 517

This weeks stats are not particularly exciting. Our pending sales are low coming out of December, but look to be recovering out of the holiday season as there are 517 A/WC contracts. These are essentially new contracts, and this is the highest number that I can remember in a weekly count in a while. In fact, I don't remember us being over 500 at any time since I started tracking, so maybe there will be some continued growth in escrows. On the negative side, the amount of active listings did jump over a 1000 from last week, but as I wrote in a previous post, people often put up their homes after the holidays. I looked at some past statistics, and found that there is a significant jump in listings in January, so if this is the bump up, we should be able to well absorb it. I do expect that January will be little changed from December sales. Watch the pending and ACW numbers, as they will tell us how February will be. We should see some gradual strength there.

I am hearing from Builders that December was a very bad month for many of them. It was the Holidays, of course, but there is still sentiment out there that prices will continue falling. I have some doubts about that, as prices have fallen to the pre-boom levels in many areas, and the downward price-elasticity may be close to full stretch, as you reach a point of the cost of building the home. My understanding is that there continues to be good rental pressure, and I can attest to that as it took very little effort on my part to rent out a condo that I own. We have the ingredients waiting here for a rebound: continued employment, increasing population, good weather, national attention through big events, and now once again, affordable housing. It may take several quarters, but we will be on the road to recovery at some point this year.