ARMLS STATS Week of 2/10/10

Buying Activity Rising, Pendings Up Sharply
Actives Rise slightly
Spring Homebuying season about to begin?


Pending: 11,837 ( +1,054 from last week)
Pending SFam: 10,170 ( +900 from last week)

AWC: 6,622 ( +296 from last week)
AWC Sfam: 5,668 ( +249 from last week)

Closed: 1,137 ( -921 from last week)
Closed Sfam: 956 ( -818 from last week)

Active Listings: 35,189 (+384 from last week)
Active Sfam: 27,570 (+273 from last week)

The number of pendings rose sharply, indicating buyer activity is leaving the winter doldrums behind. The number is well below its 2009 highs, but certainly higher than during the same week last year (8445), and if you include the eventual pending sales of the active with contingency contracts, the buying activity is much sharper.

The amount of sales being slower is of course expected, as the first week of the month is typically much less than the last week, but is approximately 20% higher than last February of the same period. February won't be a great month for sales, but you do see sales building for March. I am expecting that we will see pending sales continue to grow toward 13,000 by the end of the month.

It is still too early to tell how strong this year's recovery will be, but the early results are encouraging. We have had growing inventory for quite a few months now, but that will likely peak out here in February. It had already started falling by this time last year. It is something that we will have to watch, as an overly strong supply of resale homes can damper the prices that we would all like to see continue to climb. I do think we will see the inventory fall through the spring at this point. The general demand looks to be higher this year, and we may not see as many homes coming on the market either. We may see short sales start to slide through the process quicker too, as banks have become better at processing these. As of now, the AWC contracts that contain short sales keeps climbing and I expect it to pass 7000. There are still many many short sales waiting to happen. That is mixed news, as you like to see real sales that occur quickly, but most of those do eventually turn into sales.