Pendings Rise in March
Inventory Stays Flat
Short Sales make up most of the category of AWC.
March median price ahead of Feb. '10 median by $3K


Pending: 13,665 ( +1505 from three weeks ago)
Pending Sfam: 11,783 ( +1324 from three weeks ago)

AWC: 7,513 ( +516 from three weeks ago)
-Short sale: 6,619
AWC Sfam: 6,449 (+445 from three weeks ago)
-Short Sale: 5,667

Closed: 1,857 (N/A)
Closed Sfam: 1,571 (N/A)

Active Listings: 35,026 ( +72 from March 2)
Active Sfam: 27,369 (+39 from March 2)

Closed MTD (3/21): 5,036
Closed Sfam: 4,215

It has been a busy month, and I haven't had time to update, but there are a few things worth commenting about here. First off is that pendings are rising sharply as our seasonal demand picks up. Expect to see strong pending numbers through April, and then perhaps a flattening as the rush to utilize the tax credit expires. We are not likely to go down, as the strong summer months will carry us forward, but the April pendings could be exceptionally high.

Inventory has remained flat; we might have expected it to go down, but it has remained steady. February did not have substantially more listings on the market than 2009; in fact, only a 155. March was the largest listing month of 2009, and it maybe also this there. Pricing in March is also substantially ahead of March 2009, and steadily ahead of February 2010- 119K and $125K , respectively, to $128K for March 2010. A good indicator that inventory at this level is not going to lower prices.

I would expect inventory to have started to fall, so I have some concern, but overall, the numbers are fairly positive: we are going to have a decent month of sales in March, the inventory could be lower, but it is not terribly high, and we are seeing month over month median price gains. We also have pending sales growing substantially, and whille I am not a big fan of record numbers of short sale homes under contract, they are under contract, and they have to be thought of as pending sales to some degree. Starting April 5th, I believe, lenders will start getting some government payola to close short sales. I have a feeling that many of these short sales will start to close at a faster pace once banks are paid to close them.