ARMLS STATS 11/3-11/9/08

I am going to do an abbreviated version today, as some other issues are taking my attention on this Holiday.


PENDING SALES: 6,353 (+268 from last week)

AWC: 1,031 (+45 from last week)

CLOSED ESCROWS: 778 ( -831 from last week)

Month To Date: 815

Active Listings: 54,394 ( +542 from last week)



Single Family Stats

PENDING: 5,763 ( +223 from last week)

AWC : 943 ( +45 from last week)

CLOSED: 718 ( -758 from last week)

Active Listings: 44,759 ( +325 from last week)

The stats are typical second week; not many closings, a slight uptick in pendings, and unfortunately a fairly sharp jump in listings. It would be nice to see that number start falling, but it seems that we still have a long way to go. There are very few closings so far this month, but 4 out of the nine days were weekends and followed the the very end of a month, so not that surprising. Hopefully that number will catch up by the end of the month. We are looking for 5,000 realistic closings this month, and 5500 if you are optimistic. Those would both hold serve for a traditionally slow month. If december and january will hold up their end, it could set us up for a very strong March, when sales typically recover.

Right now, it is hard to see how the financial collapse is really affecting sales; they are about what I would have expected following the July-September numbers-slightly below those prime month sales figures. Does that mean that we were in a bit of housing recovery and then got slammed by the turmoil? I don't really see that. The pendings have been stable, so maybe we are still at a realistic bottom for our market. If horrible news doesn't really affect us, then that tells me we are at the bottom, and that we can expect to see improvement in the next six months. I don't think before the end of the year, but I do think by March, and possibly February, we are going to see some portent of things to come. Last February had some steep rises in pending sales which took some time to manifest, but we will be looking very closely at those numbers starting in late January even.