ARMLS Stats 11/29/2011

Inventory Falls Slightly Again

Pendings also down on holiday week

New listings in November will fall to multi-year low

Pending: 10,934 ( -48 from last week)

Pending Sfam: 9,517 ( -56 from last week)

AWC: 7,522 ( -95 from last week)

AWC Sfam: 6,515 (-81 from last week)

Active: 19,505 ( -97 from last week)

Active Sfam: 15,265 (-74 from last week)

Closed: 1,257 ( -585 from last week)

Closed Sfam: 1,092 ( -447 from last week)

Inventory continues to hover at multi-year lows, as new listing inventory falls further and further. New listings in November is likely to be 25% less than last November's total. This is the real story of the inventory numbers. We have not seen this few listings in a month since December 2004. Sales are definitely better than last year, but the level of inventory has now fallen 17.5% from last year. There will likely be some new inventory increases in January, as it is a busy listing month, but not before single family inventory comes close to falling into the 14,000's.

Sales are slower in November, and this year will be no exception. It is likely to far outstrip last year, however. The other indicator that is still holding up is the median price, which is holding at $115,000. I think that it could slip a bit after tomorrow, when a large volume of closings occur. It is still up, and hopefully it is a trend that will continue.

The other numbers don't tell us much; it was a holiday week, and closings are always lower since its a three day workweek for most title companies, and few people request closings for the day after thanksgiving. I am very curious how last December was such a strong sales month, with over 8000 sales. I am looking at November sales and also pending numbers, and it seems a bit of a reach. I neglected the stats last fourth quarter, so I can't see how we arrived at so many sales. It will be the only month this year with less sales than last year; or at least that is what I think. I just don't see how we surpass it.

There were some encouraging economic signals in the past week as well; consumer confidence reached multi-month highs, new home sales were better in October, and locally it appears that new home sales are also stabilizing. There are a lot of reasons for optimism in the housing market, and as long as it doesn't fall apart, we could see some substantial recovery occur in 2012.