Pendings & AWC Rise
Active Listings Fall slightly
PENDING SALES: 13,245 ( +375 from last week)
Pending Single Fam: 11,773 ( +316 from last week)
AWC: 5,581 ( +115 from last week)
AWC Single Fam: 4,964 ( +104 from last week)
CLOSED: 1,524 ( -994 from last week)
Closed Single Fam: 1,332 ( -887 from last week)
Active Listings: 31,808 ( -170 from last week)
Active Single Fam: 24,460 ( -73 from last week)
Closed MTD July: 2,412
Closed MTD Sing. Fam: 2,111
Pending sales rebounded last week from the holiday weekend, which shows there is still deep demand for housing. The demand is still at the lower end of the pricing spectrum with 2304 of the 2412 sales in July so far selling for under $500,000 or under. This is a trend we expect to see for a while, as financing for higher priced homes has lagged available mortgages for entry level properties. There also seems to be a national trend showing continuing demand, as mortgage applications continue to climb.
Active with contingency contracts are higher, but this is probably a mixed blessing-some of the increase is undoubtedly short sales, which tend to clog up the system longer than most sales. There is some evidence that much of the current AWC inventory is short sales- most of the best priced property is of course either lender owned or short sale properties, so this would make sense. The actual numbers are unclear; the statistic is not well-defined on MLS, and I am going to do some checking to see if I can nail that down. The statistic literally shows every home in AWC as being a short sale, which I don't think is the case, as there are significant other sales out there.
The silver lining of this statistic is that our actual monthly sales should be even higher, but these sales are pushed out another 2-3 months in some cases. This has a significant impact on monthly closings, so demand is actually better than what our closings show. What is not positive about this is that there are still so many short sales. The reality is that inventory is weighted heavily with short sales and lender owned properties. As this is the case, they also become a substantial portion of sales. The fact is, we have a bottleneck in sales due to lenders holding up short sales. We may not love the kind of sale it is, but it is still a sale, and for the most part, short sales will sell at "closer to market" prices than will lender owned repos, so we need to look at them as very relevant to the market. Banks need to start allowing a better flow for short sales; they are simply postponing the inevitable anyway.
There is not a lot of other info to be gleaned from statistics this week; it is too early to tell how this month will end up, and while active listings have continued to fall, the level has fallen to its potential lows given the economy and employment factors. Buyers are still buying, but we are going to continue to see some people who will not be able to hold on to their home as their income dissipates. We are not out of the woods, but let's look at what our housing market has accomplished in the last six months-we went from disaster to being back to normal levels of inventory and sales, and while sales are at lower prices, even those are starting to rebound. Hopefully, we are one of the states tha can experience a little job growth over the second half of this year, and change the psyche of the consumer to a more positive outlook.
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