MLS WEEKLY Stats Through 3/30/08

March Sales Surpass 4000- Up 23% from February!

This past week's stats are through 3/30/08, but I am also giving you the end of month sales as of April 1st A.M. There are likely some stragglers on the number of homes sold in March, as agents haven't entered them yet, but we did have a good end of month and blew through 4000 sales for March. It is not a huge number, but it is significant. Here are the numbers:

Pending Sales: 5706 ( -294 from last week)

AWC Contracts: 1115 ( +7 from last week)

Total Contracts: 6821 ( -287 from last week)

Closed 3/24-3/30: 1265 ( +450 from last week)

Active Listings: 55,661 ( -873 from last week)

Closed MTD 3/31/08: 4,214 ( +801 from February) +23%




We did in fact have a strong end of the month, and we are likely to add a few more when all the agents get their postings in. It is not as good as we all would like to see it, but nevertheless, it is a positive figure. The pending number went down, as is typical in strong end of months, but our AWC contracts kept up its pace, and we will probably see the pendings climb again next week. The final sales figure for the month that you see published in the Republic will likely be higher than my figure, as it has been historically. I am not sure what they use for their calculations, but mine are according to the raw data of the ARMLS.

Before we get ahead of ourselves here, the March numbers are supposed to be better than the February numbers, so we can't get that excited. Things are looking better though. An added bonus is that there was a significant decrease in the amount of active listings this past week, so that is good. However, at that attrition rate, it would take six months to lower the number down to a manageable figure in the mid 30k's...We would have to see some serious acceleration of the market to keep up that average. I think the number of active listings contributes more to the decrease in home values than it is does directly affect the raw sales, however. In a cumulative effect, it does impact total sales, as a huge supply of homes causes soft pricing which might dissuade people from buying now, as they wait for the bottom, but this is a secondary or even tertiary effect on sales going forward. We may have reached bottom already, and are seeing more people view housing as a good deal, given rates and selection and low possibility of massive price declines forthcoming. Families still need homes, and this is where we are seeing strength-in lower priced working family homes.