Key stats still heading in the right direction; AWC at year long high; Calendar may affect June sales.
Pending Sales: 7415 (+ 24 from last week)
Active W/ Contingency: 1530 ( +27 from last week)
Total Contracts: 8945 ( +51 from last week)
Active Listings: 52731 ( -125 from last week)
Closed Escrows 6.9.08-6.15.08 1,214 (+ 278 from last week)
Closed Month to Date (6/15/08) 2,255
We still have forward momentum in the pending contracts and active with contingency contracts; I take measurement on Tuesday morning for consistency, but I do check over the weekend for indications of where the numbers are, and the number of contracts over the weekend and into monday were well over 9100; which is very high. Also, active listings were down in the 52,600 range at the same-another good indicator. When I pulled these stats this morning, those numbers don't look quite as good. The reason for this is there were several hundred closings yesterday, that won't go into the stats until next week, and this affected the active listings, as well as causing the number of pendings to drop as they converted to sales.
In analyzing the remainder of this month, I realized that we only have this week and next as full weeks in the month. The 30th is a monday, and as such, we have a somewhat shortened last week, and it may cause the numbers to be a little lower for June than expected. We are actually on a strong pace right now, just slightly behind last year's pace on the same date, and just a tad behind May of this year's pace. The numbers are close enough that they can be accounted for by the fact that two days, 14th and 15th, are weekend dates, and don't really add to the total. In fact June this year through the 15th had a full one third be weekend days, so that probably has a little to do with the pace. That will likely straighten out over the next two weeks to some degree. Actually, if you go from June 16th of this year to last year, it is actually ahead of June's pace, but I don't like to mix up the dates that I use for official stats. The keynote is if you looked at the pace, we are ahead of June 2007 in the MLS. A very good sign.
Active listings have continued to fall ever so slightly, but they have been trending down during the month, a situation that occurred very little during most of the first half of the year. The drops usually occur towards the end of the month, if they dropped. We should see a significant drop at the end of June-or at least I am hoping we will. Sales will be good, and therefore the actives should drop off. I don't think they will fall into the 40K's this month, but we should get into position to get there maybe by the end of July. That is actually exciting.
The AWC contracts continue to increase, but not at a overly fast pace. I received a great comment from Troy Wahlberg at Keller Williams Camelback about the AWC contracts. He pointed out that short sales are usually put in the AWC category, and as those of us who have been involved in short sales know, they can take weeks and months to go through. I had addressed in an earlier post my puzzlement that new contracts were increasing at a faster rate than sales and pendings, and short sales are the likely culprit that I didn't consider. They are essentially a bottleneck in the system, as bankers take a lot of time deciding if they will take a loss or not. Thank you for the input, Troy. You can find Troy's company at http://www.kwcamelback.com/
I don't keep this particular stat regularly, but I know it is of interest to many people. The number of single family homes on the market right now is 43,168. I like to use the overall stat, as people live in condos and townhomes too, and I just prefer to keep those stats as part of the overall picture. There were 1,982 Single family homes sold from 6/1/08-6/15/08. One of the positives has been that single family homes have made up a large part of the sales figures in MLS, and I think that is a positive, as it shows that there is still relatively good demand for what is usually the highest price product among the home options. I may start tracking this stat eventually, but as realtors know, in July there is going to be a new MLS system, and I don't know how the statistics are going to work in that program, and I am not going to start a new process a few weeks before we get a whole new system that might not support my stats.
There was rumbling today about the national new home starts was down; we shall see how the statistics affects the western U.S. That usually follows in few days. The west had been showing a little better, probably on the strength of texas, but I will reserve judgement until I see that. The weekly numbers that I see, we are still scuffling along on new home sales, although new home spec inventory continues to slide according to one stat. The builders are operating pretty lean as sales have been weak, but it is necessary for them. I really blame it on people's lack of exuberance, as we are in a dismal economy, and the political situation that usually accompanies the end of a 2 term president's time in office. I will try to check in with another article later this week, if I get time.
chris
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