ARMLS STATS 12/29/09

***Closed Escrows Reach 90K+ for '09***

Active listings up slightly over the last several weeks.

Pending: 10,453 Previous Week (*NA)
Pending Sfam: 9,116 Previous Week (*NA)

AWC: 6,038 (Not Available)

AWC SFAM: 5,248 N/A)

Closed 12/21-12/27/09: 1,208 (Last Week: 1,815)

Closed Single Fam: 1,043 (Last Week: 1,519)

Active Listings: 34,174

Active Sfam: 26,593

Closed thru 12/27: 5,646

Closed Sfam: 4,880

I apologize for not posting the last few weeks, as I have been extremely busy, and with December being a relatively nondescript month in home sales, there was not much interesting going to happen anyway. Here is what we have. As expected, pendings tend to slide a bit during the holidays, and this year is no different. We won't see that activity pick up again until February, most likely. We will see inventory picking up until that time as well, as many people put their homes on the market after the first of the year. Sales for December are going to be less than previous months, but this is expected for December. It is still not a bad month, with sales likely topping 7000, although the last week is hard to predict here. We are at over 6000 including yesterday, so we might see a little flourish that puts us over 7000. Last December sales totaled 5451 for the whole month, and was about 4300 through the 27th, so we can expect another 1000-1200 sales from our current position, I think. We have reached 90,000 sales, which is a pretty good year for sales. Inventory is still too high, but we might see that being reduced substantially by May once the spring buying season heats up. It is not likely to be as dramatic as last year, but it still looks likely. Prices are likely to flatten a little bit locally, as buying pressure decreases in the winter, but will pick up again in March and April.

Pricing will be a key issue this upcoming year. I do think we will be flat if not down over the next few months. When we start seeing a push in buyer activity beginning in late February, we will see upward price pressure again.

This chart is courtesy of MLS, and it shows some of the trends for the past year. We have improved our situation pretty dramatically since January of last year. Prices have stabilized, and while they may bump along for a few months, we still will see an increase by this time next year- probably a fairly substantial one.

I wish you all a very happy new year, and hope that we will have a lot of good things to discuss about our industry going forward!

chris

Active Listings Up
Only 1/3 of new listings this week are lender-owned.
Another 500+ are short-sale listings.
3,065 of November Sales were Bank-Owned.

Pending: 10,905 ( +84 from last week)
Pending Sfam: 9,535 ( +67 from last week)

AWC: 6,244 (+112 from last week)
AWC SF: 5,472 ( +99 from last week)

Closed 11/30-12/6 2,204 ( +614 from last week)
Closed Sfam: 1,902 ( +510 from last week)

Active Listings: 33,903 ( +428 from last week)
Active Sfam: 26,346 ( +362 from last week)


Here is a little data to place in historical perspective that you might find interesting.

Year to Date Sales: 84,848 (Through 11/30/09)
2003: 79,512
2004: 98,294
2005: 104,133
2006: 74,106
2007: 54,231
2008: 59,225
2009: Likely to top 90,000 sales.

New listings for the week were 2,488. About 800 were bank listings, far less than what I expected. I just envisioned that as being higher.

I am swamped today, so no analysis. I did pull the number of bank-owned sales in November, and I was surprised that the number wasn't higher. I was also surprised to see that bank-owned didn't make up a larger portion of the new listings from the last week. I checked last year's inventory levels for this week, and they all climbed in the first week of December, before starting to fall off a bit. If the number of new listing was massively lender-related, I would be more concerned that the number wouldn't be falling over the course of December. It still might not, but its playing pretty close to the seasonal factors right now.

Have a great week.

ARMLS STATISTICS FOR 11/23-11/29/09

Preliminary Sales Reach 7599 for November
Actives down, Pendings off sharply.
AWC also down; are short sales finally closing?

PENDING: 10,821 ( -1024 from last week)
Pending Sfam: 9,468 (-912 from last week)

AWC: 6,132 ( -252 from last week)
AWC Single Fam: 5,373 ( -230 from last week)

Closed: 1,592 (-286 from last week)
Closed Sfam: 1,392 (-230 from last week)

Active Listings: 33,475 ( -156 from last week)
Active Sfam: 25,984 ( -112 from last week)

CLOSED Nov. 7,599
Closed Sfam: 6,584

I am under the weather today, so I am not to going to do much with this. The closings show that we are going to come up short of the 8000 we projected for November. The current number is going to rise, as realtors will be adding more in from yesterday's closings, but it won't be enough to reach 8000. Its an okay month, but not an outstanding one.

Inventory fell a little in the past week, as did AWC contracts. I am not sure if that means more short sales closed, or that new contracts have slowed. It is likley the second one, as we are going into a dormancy period for a few months, and new activity can be expected to slacken.

I will update a more complete final closing tally later this week; it certainly will surpass 7600.