ARMLS STATS 9/13-9/19/10
Pending: 10,250
Pending Sfam: 8,840
AWC: 6,203
AWC: 5,319
Closed 9/13/-9/19: 1,452
Closed Sfam: 1,214
Closed Sept 19: 3,205
Closed Sfam: 2,668
Active: 38804
Active Sfam: 31,370
Closed August: 7,221
Closed Sfam: 6,070
I apologize for the hiatus; I have recently opened up an office again, and moving that, along with being fairly busy, caused this blog to lose its place in the pecking order.
MLS stats ending August were up slightly from July, but were generally flat, as we trudged through a slumping economy this summer. One bright spot might be that it appears short sales (as denoted by AWC contracts) are declining from their peak numbers approaching 8,100 in May. Banks are getting better at handling short sales, and it might be a sign that short sales may be on their way to winding down. The supply of short sale homes is an indication of market health, and as these dissipate, it shows less homeowners are experiencing economic distress. It is a number we will continue to watch, but it is generally a positive trend.
Less positive has been the gradual increase of inventory this summer. It has been a softer summer for sales, due to what we can now see as the economy having lost a lot of traction over the summer. The optimism of a clean turnaround early in the year gave way to the reality that employers were not yet hiring, and still aren't due to economic uncertainty. The fact that these tax hikes are still planned for job creators (the $250K+ income crowd) seems to have stunted hiring, and raised fears of renewed recession. It does seem like we have stabilized, but the continuing uncertainty is still restraining job growth. The republicans' expected sweep into power in the upcoming elections are probably the best hope for job creation, as gridlock has always fostered expansion. This was in retrospect an underperforming summer for housing. We will have to see if the fourth quarter brightens up, but the trend has been lackluster.
It does seem like homes at the lower end are firming up, while the higher priced move ups and luxury home market is still fairly stagnant. I think we will see it that way until we see some broad reasons for optimism from the economy: increased hiring, stock prices, stability.
We did see a surprise sharp jump in new housing starts in August, which I will detail next week. We might be where we are seeing lagging indicators now, and that the economy is turning up for more people than we realize, but it will still be 2011 before we have seen substantial gains in the housing market and likely fall to less than 9.5% unemployment.
I would expect that we will close in the neighborhood of 7000 homes in September. It is not a great number, but it will have to do for now. We didn't see it coming in, but there was a sharp fall off in buyers over the summer, due in part to the end of the tax credit, but also to the relatively difficult process of qualifying for a loan. Unless you were buying fannie mae or freddie mac or getting an FHA loan, you had to bring some serious cash to the table. This of course stunts closings.
The hope is that we can stay at current levels through the fall and into December. Those are traditionally very poor months, but if we see some stability through 4th quarter, economic factors will bring us into 2011 at a good pitch, and we are almost certainly going to see rising levels of optimism after elections this fall. Gridlock creates certainty, and that is proven to be the best case scenario for the economy in the past.
