MLS STATS 1/10/12

Pendings Rise Sharply

First week of January Sales off to sluggish start

Pending: 9,973 (+806 from last week)

Pending Sfam: 8,679

AWC: 6,841

AWC Sfam: 5,941

Active: 18,521

Active Sfam: 14,513

Closed 1/2-1/8/12: 877

Closed Sfam: 737

I am pressed for time this week, so I won't do the differentials from last week, but these are the raw numbers from Yesterday. Closings were off, not surprisingly, for the first week of the new year. However, pendings showed a dramatic rise, perhaps portending an earlier than usual buying season. I don't really expect pendings to start rising until the middle of next month, but if we have some fundamentally stronger buyer activity, I won't be surprised. We seem to be moving in the right direction economically, and that helps. I also saw a report that said mortgage applications are up, so perhaps we have some people getting back in the market.

Not surprisingly there is also word that nearly half of Arizona's home sales in 2011 were cash. It seems that investors have taken up much of the slack in the lower end of the home market. We have dramatically reduced inventory from the the peak, and I can speak with first hand knowledge about the competition for investor properties. I have gone through a streak of about seven contracts that we have attempted to buy properties for clients that we did not get the deal, and 4 of those were significantly over asking price. There is strong demand, it appears, and I do think that it will carry over to March.

On the downside, the first week of January shows awful sales. Its not surprising, but we still don't want to see that as a trend. The pending numbers probably indicate that is holiday hangover, though, as they rose very sharply. Inventory rose a little also, but as is typical in January when sales are somewhat limited. The rate of new inventory was on track to be a bit over 10,000- a significant fall from January 2011's 12,000+.

That is about all I have time to analyze this week; its not a very interesting time of the month or even month, but we are getting ever so much closer to the early spring buying season when we might begin to see sentiment shift to optimism.