MLS STATS 10/6-10/12/08

LISTINGS RISE SHARPLY, SALES DROP


PENDING: 6570 ( +110 from last week)

AWC: 1,035 ( +29 from last week)

CLOSED ESCROWS: 884 ( -907 from last week)

ACTIVE LISTINGS: 53,469 ( +599 from last week)

CLOSED MTD: 1,533


SINGLE FAMILY STATS

PENDING: 5,947 ( +103 from last week)

AWC: 954 ( +22 from last week)

ACTIVE LISTINGS: 43,977 ( +536 from last week)

CLOSED ESCROWS: 795 ( -825 from last week)

CLOSED MTD: 1,379


This past week was a terrible one for confidence in the global financial system. The stock market was rocked, and confidence was just hammered, and it seems like maybe it took a toll on housing. The amount of closings shriveled, and the number of homes on the market shot up unexpectedly. The pending number is decent, but not really strong, and I have to think that the financial scare is going to affect October and November's housing numbers now. It does appear more people are putting homes on the market, as either this financial scare affected them, or that the increasing amount of sales makes people think that it is feasible to get a home on the market again.

Other people are more optimistic about October, although I am not really sure what they are basing that on. This is an article from The Republic about investors chasing lower priced houses. I don't think that October will be a banner month for sales; I am hoping that it will hold up to September and August, or even somewhat close to that. This past week was way below what a weekly closed figure has been lately, and it makes it tough to recover over the next few weeks to get to even 5000 sales, a number that is far below what the last several have been. Granted, people had a lot of other things on their mind this past week, but the numbers should really have been better than this.

I don't even want to get into the Active listings...they have been climbing, despite our increasing sales, and I don't think there is any denying that fact. While our new construction inventory has now fallen below its historical high water mark, resales are still clogging up the system, and until that number starts to fall we will not reach a pricing bottom. We have reached a sales bottom, I think, a year ago almost, but pricing pressure is still downward, as we can't seem to get past this inventory point.