ARMLS STATS 9/29/09
Pending: 13,148 (-43 from last week)
Pending SF: 11,596 (-80 from last week)
AWC: 6,589 ( +52 from last week)
AWC SFam: 5,847 ( +73 from last week)
Closed: 2,114 ( +362 from last week)
Closed Sfam: 1,855 ( +315 from last week)
Active: 31,217 ( -36 from last week)
Active Sfam: 24,031 ( +21 from last week)
Closed MTD Through 9/27/09: 6,002
Closed MTD Sfam: 5,271
I have zero time to do any analysis this week, but we are on track for a weaker month of September. If we reach 7600 sales we will be doing very well, but I expect it to settle less than that.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
MLS STATS 9/14/09-9/20/09
Inventory Flat, AWC Stuffed with Short Sales
Weekly Sales Up, But September will Disappoint
Pendings Rising Close to June Levels; Big October Coming?
PENDING: 13,191 ( +269 from last week)
PENDING SF: 11,676 ( +209 from last week)
AWC: 6,537 ( +16 from last week)
AWC Single Fam: 5,774 ( +36 from last week)
Closed: 1,752 ( +454 from last week)
Closed SFam: 1,540 ( +393 from last week)
Active: 31,253 ( +27 from last week)
Active SFam: 24,010 ( -1 from last week)
CLOSED MTD: 4,192
Closed SFam: 3,678
September sales are likely to finish a little bit light, as the first two weeks closed was disappointing. This past week was better, and pending sales are pointing to what looks like a stronger October. September could finish exceptionally strong, but this week would have to be gangbusters, and the short week next week would have to follow suit. I am not anticipating 8000 sales this month, but we could be surprised. What's interesting is that pending sales are rising at a pretty good clip. In fact, they are practically at the same level as June, which preceded pretty good numbers for July. The end of May pending numbers were higher by a few hundred, so we are not likely to see June-type sales numbers, but this forecasts pretty strong sales. We will keep an eye on it, but the next few months may blunt the expected inventory rise that comes with 4th quarter reduction in sales.
September sales are not going to be great; the first two weeks started very poorly, and this past week was okay, but not strong enough to make up for the first few weeks. I don't expect that we will sell 2500 for each of the next few weeks, so I am expecting somewhere in the high 7000's for overall sales. A bit disappointing, but the recovery was going to go in fits and starts, and September looks like it will be one of those mileposts. October could be a much stronger month than expected, given pending sales, so September might just be a blip.
We are solidly in recovery, and I am seeing fairly widespread anecdotal evidence that the best priced housing product is disappearing at a pretty rapid clip. This doesn't mean that "market priced" homes are going quickly- buyers are still finding an abundance of lender owned properties at lower prices- but we are getting closer.
We continue to have low interest rates, making sales possible, and there is some talk about extending the $8000 tax credit, and possibly expanding it too all homebuyers, in order to stimulate the housing recovery. This is likely, given the "cash for clunkers" program's success. It is one of the few forms of the stimulus that actually puts money directly into the hands of consumer. We could see a pretty good uptick in sales were they to give the consumer a kick like that.
-chris
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
MLS STATS 9/7/09-9/13/09
Inventory Rises Slightly Again
Pendings, AWC both Climb
Inventory likely is rise slightly through the fall.
PENDING: 12,922 ( +327 from last week)
Pending SF: 11,467 ( +265 from last week)
AWC: 6,521 ( +158 from last week)
AWC SF: 5,774 ( +133 from last week)
CLOSED: 1,298 ( -649 from last week)
Closed SF: 1,147 ( -570 from last week)
ACTIVE: 31,226 ( +116 from last week)
Active SF: 24,011 ( +135 from last week)
CLOSED MTD: 2,393
Closed SF MTD: 2,102
Inventory rose just a bit for the second time in September, signifying an increasing number of new listings. Single family listings rose more than overall listings, suggesting that condo sales are perhaps starting to show some strength. A look inside the numbers shows that new listings increase in September and October. This is likely the case again, as it is a seasonal issue. Of the 2,290 new listings in the last week, 654 were lender owned, which was an increase of 222. There were 570 more listings put on the market this week than last, so that is going to have an effect. August was a much slower month for lender-owned properties going on the market, as it appears that lenders were perhaps holding back foreclosures waiting for the new law regarding deficiencies that they tried to sneak through the legislature. This failed, so we may see an increasing number of lender listings come on the market. Comparatively, there were about 1000 more listings put on the market this week in September than there were in the similar week of August '09. Of these,
665 were not lender-owned or short sale. A very large share of our inventory is still bank-owned and short sale, which contributes to the flat pricing we are experiencing. We may see more lender owned homes on the market in the next quarter, due to the aforementioned repeal of the deficiency legislation. The lenders don't have as much reason to forestall foreclosures now, as that law would have benefited them tremendously and unfairly. We will watch the inventory trends for the next few weeks to see what happens.
The positive side is that pendings are still rising, which foreshadows decent sales at the end of this month, and possibly October. The month has started off slow, I would say, but we won't know until the end of September. It certainly will be better than last year, but is not likely to be the best month of 2009. The AWC count also continues to rise, as more and more of potential sales are being delayed as they are short sale properties. This fact may mean that we see a fair amount of closings stretch out into the quieter months of 4th Quarter. I think we are going to see this trend continue, as so much of the available inventory is short sale. Sales are taking longer to go through, so it appears that sales activity is slower than it really is. For example, this same week in 2008, the total number of AWC contracts was only 1,048. It has grown sixfold due to short sale contracts. Those are a large number of contracts that could have already closed, but sit in purgatory waiting for lenders to do something. They are being their own worst enemy here.
It is encouraging to see pendings rising still, as it does denote strength, but we are also likely to see some inventory gains, as we go through the slower winter period. The normal pattern is that normal sellers also take a break in the fall, putting less inventory up for sale after September, but with lender-driven properties being such a large part of the inventory, we will have to wait and see.
I have some things that require my immediate attention, so I am going to cut analysis short today. I will try to make up for it next week.
chris
Pendings, AWC both Climb
Inventory likely is rise slightly through the fall.
PENDING: 12,922 ( +327 from last week)
Pending SF: 11,467 ( +265 from last week)
AWC: 6,521 ( +158 from last week)
AWC SF: 5,774 ( +133 from last week)
CLOSED: 1,298 ( -649 from last week)
Closed SF: 1,147 ( -570 from last week)
ACTIVE: 31,226 ( +116 from last week)
Active SF: 24,011 ( +135 from last week)
CLOSED MTD: 2,393
Closed SF MTD: 2,102
Inventory rose just a bit for the second time in September, signifying an increasing number of new listings. Single family listings rose more than overall listings, suggesting that condo sales are perhaps starting to show some strength. A look inside the numbers shows that new listings increase in September and October. This is likely the case again, as it is a seasonal issue. Of the 2,290 new listings in the last week, 654 were lender owned, which was an increase of 222. There were 570 more listings put on the market this week than last, so that is going to have an effect. August was a much slower month for lender-owned properties going on the market, as it appears that lenders were perhaps holding back foreclosures waiting for the new law regarding deficiencies that they tried to sneak through the legislature. This failed, so we may see an increasing number of lender listings come on the market. Comparatively, there were about 1000 more listings put on the market this week in September than there were in the similar week of August '09. Of these,
665 were not lender-owned or short sale. A very large share of our inventory is still bank-owned and short sale, which contributes to the flat pricing we are experiencing. We may see more lender owned homes on the market in the next quarter, due to the aforementioned repeal of the deficiency legislation. The lenders don't have as much reason to forestall foreclosures now, as that law would have benefited them tremendously and unfairly. We will watch the inventory trends for the next few weeks to see what happens.
The positive side is that pendings are still rising, which foreshadows decent sales at the end of this month, and possibly October. The month has started off slow, I would say, but we won't know until the end of September. It certainly will be better than last year, but is not likely to be the best month of 2009. The AWC count also continues to rise, as more and more of potential sales are being delayed as they are short sale properties. This fact may mean that we see a fair amount of closings stretch out into the quieter months of 4th Quarter. I think we are going to see this trend continue, as so much of the available inventory is short sale. Sales are taking longer to go through, so it appears that sales activity is slower than it really is. For example, this same week in 2008, the total number of AWC contracts was only 1,048. It has grown sixfold due to short sale contracts. Those are a large number of contracts that could have already closed, but sit in purgatory waiting for lenders to do something. They are being their own worst enemy here.
It is encouraging to see pendings rising still, as it does denote strength, but we are also likely to see some inventory gains, as we go through the slower winter period. The normal pattern is that normal sellers also take a break in the fall, putting less inventory up for sale after September, but with lender-driven properties being such a large part of the inventory, we will have to wait and see.
I have some things that require my immediate attention, so I am going to cut analysis short today. I will try to make up for it next week.
chris
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
MLS STATS 8/31/-9/6/09
Pendings and AWC Rise
August Finishes over 8,000 Closings
Active listings flat; inventory has probably reached low point for '09.
PENDING: 12,595 ( +404 from last week)
Pending SF: 11,202 ( +328 from last week)
AWC: 6,363 ( +279 from last week)
AWC SF: 5,641 ( +256 from last week)
CLOSED: 1,947 ( -102 from last week)
Closed SF: 1,717 ( -89 from last week)
Active: 31,110 ( +99 from last week)
Active SF: 23,876 ( +51 from last week)
CLOSED SALES: AUGUST 2009: 8,042
Closed Single Family Aug '09: 7,070
These stats included a holiday weekend, which tend to throw stats off somewhat. Typically, less showings and less sales occur. We do see that pendings rose, along with AWC. Short sale listings are a very large contributor to overall sales right now. Out of 1,031 new AWC contracts since 8/31/09, 732 are short sales. Interestingly though, only 532 of the 2523 homes that went "Pending" in that same time frame are listed as short sales. That is a very telling statistic that shows why AWC has grown so much. These homes don't tend to go pending very quickly, nor close quickly, and linger in AWC for months. Only 535 of the closings that have occurred since then are listed as short sale closings. With so many short sale listings, we can see how this is beginning to "stretch out" sales that should already be occurring. Banks need to stop worrying about whether someone did a dime under the foyer plant, and start loosening up these closings. It doesn't really do a lot of good to let them languish while they thoroughly investigate the finances of the seller. There is no percentage in that for them, they are only stretching their pain out.
August did finish over 8000 sales. I saw an article in the paper about how few sales occurred in August, using yet another data supplier. The article did not give any recent historical data that made any sense, saying how sales were down some percentage. Yes, August was down compared to July, but that is expected. However, the numbers given were just misleading. One, MLS data, while the gold standard for number of sales because of its consistent reporting, reports low. There are transactions outside of MLS- these will only show up in the county recordings. I am not concerned with those sales, as they don't significantly change the totals, and they aren't reported consistently. Statististics are worthless if you don't have other results with which to compare. I use MLS stats as they are readily available, typify the general market, and are updated daily. They report a little low; and there are not going to be a negative amount of recordings-we know this, so this data in the article they get from random people showing barely 7000 sales for the month is not very credible. So you come to the conclusion that they are picking out zip codes, and using only those zip codes for sales. This is just not relevant as so much of our home sales occur in places like Wittmann, Buckeye, Maricopa, and Casa Grande. To start suppressing the numbers by limiting the area reported after long reporting the whole system unfairly reports the real result. August was not the best month this year; July was superior, as was June. August is not the best month of the summer per prior statistics, so this result was not unexpected. We reached 8000 sales which was very good given last year. We reduced the number of listings on the market, and prices maintained. It was a decent month, despite the searching out of negative news by the media looking to pull eyes through fear.
I do suspect that we have probably reached the low ebb for inventory this year. We do expect some lenders to quicken the foreclosure process on many homes that they were holding off on due to the insidious deficiency law they tried to sneak through. It was repealed, and now they have no reason to delay this process. I do think we will probably see a w-shaped inventory report from 2009 through 2010. There eventually has to be more inventory. And as we are going to be leaving our prime sales season, we could see that inventory rise in October. Traditional homeowners tend to slow down listing property going into the winter months here, but we will see more non-traditional listings hit the market from banks. I don't see a doomsday increase, but we are likely to see some. The counter to this argument all year has been that traditional homeowners are staying put, as they can't sell for a profit, and they can't re-qualify for a better home, so their homes are not being made available as inventory, so the supply of bank assets is being offset by the decrease in traditional listings. Its difficult to say whether that relationship will continue, but inventory shrunk markedly this year, despite all of the foreclosures.
One last thing I wanted to mention was that I was in Florence yesterday at Merrill Ranch at Anthem. There is a beautiful golf course down there called Poston Butte, and the summer rate was too good to pass up. I hadn't been there in a year, but what was surprising to me was how many new homes were being built down there as you work your way through the course. It is a fairly new course, and community, but to see as many new homes under construction in the far reaches of the valley was very telling to me. They could not continue to build these homes if they were not selling them. The time of mass spec home production is behind us, and there was a lot of activity, and they were even stuccoing homes yesterday. As a land broker, this was very reassuring to me.
August Finishes over 8,000 Closings
Active listings flat; inventory has probably reached low point for '09.
PENDING: 12,595 ( +404 from last week)
Pending SF: 11,202 ( +328 from last week)
AWC: 6,363 ( +279 from last week)
AWC SF: 5,641 ( +256 from last week)
CLOSED: 1,947 ( -102 from last week)
Closed SF: 1,717 ( -89 from last week)
Active: 31,110 ( +99 from last week)
Active SF: 23,876 ( +51 from last week)
CLOSED SALES: AUGUST 2009: 8,042
Closed Single Family Aug '09: 7,070
These stats included a holiday weekend, which tend to throw stats off somewhat. Typically, less showings and less sales occur. We do see that pendings rose, along with AWC. Short sale listings are a very large contributor to overall sales right now. Out of 1,031 new AWC contracts since 8/31/09, 732 are short sales. Interestingly though, only 532 of the 2523 homes that went "Pending" in that same time frame are listed as short sales. That is a very telling statistic that shows why AWC has grown so much. These homes don't tend to go pending very quickly, nor close quickly, and linger in AWC for months. Only 535 of the closings that have occurred since then are listed as short sale closings. With so many short sale listings, we can see how this is beginning to "stretch out" sales that should already be occurring. Banks need to stop worrying about whether someone did a dime under the foyer plant, and start loosening up these closings. It doesn't really do a lot of good to let them languish while they thoroughly investigate the finances of the seller. There is no percentage in that for them, they are only stretching their pain out.
August did finish over 8000 sales. I saw an article in the paper about how few sales occurred in August, using yet another data supplier. The article did not give any recent historical data that made any sense, saying how sales were down some percentage. Yes, August was down compared to July, but that is expected. However, the numbers given were just misleading. One, MLS data, while the gold standard for number of sales because of its consistent reporting, reports low. There are transactions outside of MLS- these will only show up in the county recordings. I am not concerned with those sales, as they don't significantly change the totals, and they aren't reported consistently. Statististics are worthless if you don't have other results with which to compare. I use MLS stats as they are readily available, typify the general market, and are updated daily. They report a little low; and there are not going to be a negative amount of recordings-we know this, so this data in the article they get from random people showing barely 7000 sales for the month is not very credible. So you come to the conclusion that they are picking out zip codes, and using only those zip codes for sales. This is just not relevant as so much of our home sales occur in places like Wittmann, Buckeye, Maricopa, and Casa Grande. To start suppressing the numbers by limiting the area reported after long reporting the whole system unfairly reports the real result. August was not the best month this year; July was superior, as was June. August is not the best month of the summer per prior statistics, so this result was not unexpected. We reached 8000 sales which was very good given last year. We reduced the number of listings on the market, and prices maintained. It was a decent month, despite the searching out of negative news by the media looking to pull eyes through fear.
I do suspect that we have probably reached the low ebb for inventory this year. We do expect some lenders to quicken the foreclosure process on many homes that they were holding off on due to the insidious deficiency law they tried to sneak through. It was repealed, and now they have no reason to delay this process. I do think we will probably see a w-shaped inventory report from 2009 through 2010. There eventually has to be more inventory. And as we are going to be leaving our prime sales season, we could see that inventory rise in October. Traditional homeowners tend to slow down listing property going into the winter months here, but we will see more non-traditional listings hit the market from banks. I don't see a doomsday increase, but we are likely to see some. The counter to this argument all year has been that traditional homeowners are staying put, as they can't sell for a profit, and they can't re-qualify for a better home, so their homes are not being made available as inventory, so the supply of bank assets is being offset by the decrease in traditional listings. Its difficult to say whether that relationship will continue, but inventory shrunk markedly this year, despite all of the foreclosures.
One last thing I wanted to mention was that I was in Florence yesterday at Merrill Ranch at Anthem. There is a beautiful golf course down there called Poston Butte, and the summer rate was too good to pass up. I hadn't been there in a year, but what was surprising to me was how many new homes were being built down there as you work your way through the course. It is a fairly new course, and community, but to see as many new homes under construction in the far reaches of the valley was very telling to me. They could not continue to build these homes if they were not selling them. The time of mass spec home production is behind us, and there was a lot of activity, and they were even stuccoing homes yesterday. As a land broker, this was very reassuring to me.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
MLS STATS 8/24-8/30/09
AUG. PRELIM CLOSINGS: 7979- a little light.
Single Family Listings Fall into 23K's!
AWC contracts slide slightly-short sales beginning to Close?
**September 1st is the two-year anniversary of this blog. **
PENDING SALES: 12,191 ( -601 from last week)
Pending S.Fam: 10,874 ( -496 from last week)
AWC: 6,084 ( -46 from last week)
AWC Single Fam: 5,385 (-47 from last week)
CLOSED: 2,076 ( +393 from last week)
Closed Single Fam: 1,806 ( +329 from last week)
Active Listings: 31,011 ( -257 from last week)
Active Single Fam: 23,825 ( -176 from last week)
August CLOSED: 7,979
August Closed SFam: 7,010
Sales for August turned up a bit light, as expectations were they would cross 8,000. It still is likely to happen, as realtors sometimes lag in putting their closings in to the system. I usually wait a few days before putting this figure up, but it did close out yesterday, so this is fairly accurate within several dozen closings in the MLS for August.
Pending sales also fell at the end of the month as per usual, but the number is still pretty strong. We will see it grow again going into September, but we will start to see the predictive numbers tail off, as October and November are not expected to be blowout months. Perhaps because of the $8000 credit, we will see some stronger activity after September, but don't bank on it.
Interestingly, AWC contracts fell for the first time, I think, in quite a long time, as sales either are decreasing, or short sales are finally starting to exit the system. There were 159 more short sales in August than July, which means that given August had a smaller sales figure, they do make up an even larger proportion of sales in August than July. Its enough to account for the number, but the number of short sales categorized as AWC did fall slightly from last week, so that does support that short sales may finally start closing, instead of clogging up AWC in the MLS system.
Encouragingly, Active listings fell at the end of August, relatively sharply too. We have finally fallen into the $23K's in Single Family Listings. We have also reached a reduced number of closings, compared to June, so its not all great, but we need to see listings fall as low as possible prior to the fall slowdown. We are likely to see some foreclosures added back to the market in October and November, when sales won't be able to keep up with new foreclosure listings.
Both single family and sales overall average median prices stayed the same- $130K, and $125K, respectively. We are still seeing the pricing effect of bank and short sales making up such a large portion of available inventory. Prices are kept relatively low, as people see these as less valuable properties. There is also a steady supply of them. September is usually a month in which a lot of listings come on the market as well, so we will be watching for that.
We did have 1,580 less listings in August than we did last year, and we did surpass August 2008 in dollar volume of sales, even with the drastically reduced prices year over year. These are minor statistics, but they do point to stability in the current market.
On the media front, nationl pending sales figures made news today. So much of our industry is psychological, and thse are the kind of stories that are crucial to the turnaround. First, it does prove that housing is getting better, but its arguably as important for the consumer to see that its safe to poke his head above ground again- or more accurately, dig up the bankroll he buried in the backyard. The cash for clunkers program was a tremendous benefit to the overall psychology of consumers, at a measly price of 3 billion dollars. We as a nation are sheeple, and we tend to follow the crowd. "If others are buying, I should be too." That is how it works.
The other positive bit of news, besides GM's blowout car sales report, is that the labor market may be bottoming. Let's hope that is true.
Kind of a mixed bag this week. I would have hoped we would blow past 8000 sales in August, but we likely just reached it. But we did have inventory levels falling again, and we reached a new multiyear low in Single Family listings. We also might be starting to see banks dispose of short sales a little quicker, which would be a tremendous benefit to all of us.
Single Family Listings Fall into 23K's!
AWC contracts slide slightly-short sales beginning to Close?
**September 1st is the two-year anniversary of this blog. **
PENDING SALES: 12,191 ( -601 from last week)
Pending S.Fam: 10,874 ( -496 from last week)
AWC: 6,084 ( -46 from last week)
AWC Single Fam: 5,385 (-47 from last week)
CLOSED: 2,076 ( +393 from last week)
Closed Single Fam: 1,806 ( +329 from last week)
Active Listings: 31,011 ( -257 from last week)
Active Single Fam: 23,825 ( -176 from last week)
August CLOSED: 7,979
August Closed SFam: 7,010
Sales for August turned up a bit light, as expectations were they would cross 8,000. It still is likely to happen, as realtors sometimes lag in putting their closings in to the system. I usually wait a few days before putting this figure up, but it did close out yesterday, so this is fairly accurate within several dozen closings in the MLS for August.
Pending sales also fell at the end of the month as per usual, but the number is still pretty strong. We will see it grow again going into September, but we will start to see the predictive numbers tail off, as October and November are not expected to be blowout months. Perhaps because of the $8000 credit, we will see some stronger activity after September, but don't bank on it.
Interestingly, AWC contracts fell for the first time, I think, in quite a long time, as sales either are decreasing, or short sales are finally starting to exit the system. There were 159 more short sales in August than July, which means that given August had a smaller sales figure, they do make up an even larger proportion of sales in August than July. Its enough to account for the number, but the number of short sales categorized as AWC did fall slightly from last week, so that does support that short sales may finally start closing, instead of clogging up AWC in the MLS system.
Encouragingly, Active listings fell at the end of August, relatively sharply too. We have finally fallen into the $23K's in Single Family Listings. We have also reached a reduced number of closings, compared to June, so its not all great, but we need to see listings fall as low as possible prior to the fall slowdown. We are likely to see some foreclosures added back to the market in October and November, when sales won't be able to keep up with new foreclosure listings.
Both single family and sales overall average median prices stayed the same- $130K, and $125K, respectively. We are still seeing the pricing effect of bank and short sales making up such a large portion of available inventory. Prices are kept relatively low, as people see these as less valuable properties. There is also a steady supply of them. September is usually a month in which a lot of listings come on the market as well, so we will be watching for that.
We did have 1,580 less listings in August than we did last year, and we did surpass August 2008 in dollar volume of sales, even with the drastically reduced prices year over year. These are minor statistics, but they do point to stability in the current market.
On the media front, nationl pending sales figures made news today. So much of our industry is psychological, and thse are the kind of stories that are crucial to the turnaround. First, it does prove that housing is getting better, but its arguably as important for the consumer to see that its safe to poke his head above ground again- or more accurately, dig up the bankroll he buried in the backyard. The cash for clunkers program was a tremendous benefit to the overall psychology of consumers, at a measly price of 3 billion dollars. We as a nation are sheeple, and we tend to follow the crowd. "If others are buying, I should be too." That is how it works.
The other positive bit of news, besides GM's blowout car sales report, is that the labor market may be bottoming. Let's hope that is true.
Kind of a mixed bag this week. I would have hoped we would blow past 8000 sales in August, but we likely just reached it. But we did have inventory levels falling again, and we reached a new multiyear low in Single Family listings. We also might be starting to see banks dispose of short sales a little quicker, which would be a tremendous benefit to all of us.
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