Brett Farve Signs with the Vikings!
Pendings Up, Sales Up, Overall Listings Slide
AWC continue to grow; not necessarily a positive.
Pending Sales: 12,652 ( +284 from last week)
Pending SFam: 11,236 ( +231 from last week)
AWC: 6,013 ( +186 from last week)
AWC SFAM: 5,330 ( +152 from last week)
Closed: 1,664 ( +252 from last week)
Closed SFam: 1,479 ( +236 from last week)
Active Listings: 31,316 ( -230 from last week)
Active SFam: 24,078 ( +14 from last week)
CLOSED MTD: 3,257
Closed SFam: 2,879
Statistics for the week don't tell us a lot; the closings continue to show strength, putting us on track for 8000+ closings in the month in all likelihood. Overall listings fell again, but single family stayed stable. Either condos are starting to sell, or there are a few more foreclosures making an appearance. I will let a few more weeks go by before I do a detailed analysis of this. The national new housing sales is actually positive, with overall starts down, but single family starts were actually higher. This being reported as negative news is baffling certainly apartment construction contributes to economic activity, but reporting it in the context that housing starts are down, because apartment construction is down, is deceiving. Beazer, Fulton, DR Horton, and Toll Brothers could care less if apartment construction dropped to zer0; in fact they might like it, as it denotes how consumers view economic conditions. If they feel good about the long term, they will buy homes, if they are unsure, there is more demand for rental properties. I have always been baffled by the combination of these two statistics.
The statistics show we are still in recovery, albeit with one that there are still significant numbers of foreclosures out there. We still see the AWC category reaching new records each week, due to short sale contracts piling up. At some point, these short sales must start closing. Only 535 of the closings this month are short sales so far. These are starting to jam up the system, and the banks need to do a better job of clearing these.
Most importantly this week, and quite honestly the reason I won't be doing a lot of in-depth analysis, is that Brett Favre signed with the Vikings, and I am just too excited about the season to do much analysis today. So between that, and the mid- month point we are at, this is going to be an abbreviated post. It looks like we are still doing well, and will probably continue to do well into September. The Vikings will start doing well in September. Go Vikes!
chris
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
MLS STATS 8/3-8/09-2009
LISTINGS RISE FOR FIRST TIME IN MONTHS
PENDINGS UP SHARPLY, AWC UP AGAIN
Rise in inventory attributable to Lender -owned listings...
PENDING SALES: 12,368 ( +340 from last week)
Pending Sing. Fam: 11,005 ( +278 from last week)
AWC: 5,827 ( +126 from last week)
AWC Sing. Fam: 5,178 ( +102 from last week)
Closed Escrows: 1,412 ( -1362 from last week)
Closed Single Fam: 1,243 ( -1194 from last week)
Active Listings: 31,546 (+215 from last week)
Active Single Fam: 24,064 (+221 from last week)
Closed MTD (8-9-09): 1526
Closed MTD SFam: 1,342
The big news of the week is that active listing rose for the first time in quite a while. The reason for this was a sharp weekly increase in single family listings. There were 753 new single family listings compared to the week before. Its highly likely that some lender pushed out a whole raft of inventory all at once to contribute to this rise. The other categories- condos, mobiles, townhomes, etc, were actually down slightly. Compared to the previous week, there were 100 more active listings put on the market in Phoenix, 42 more homes in Scottsdale, 29 more in Maricopa, 10 more in Mesa, and 9 more in Surprise.
There is no real discernable geographic pattern where the increase in listings is coming from. New weekly listings are broadly spread, as you can see, and would expect. The bulk of the listings, 1277 out of 1989 single family listings, occurred in the price range of 100K-500K. Only 633 of the 1989 were listed as lender-owned, however, which I found surprising. 535 were short sale properties. That number is not particularly high, as the previous weeks short sale listings were 466-this is not the source of the increase. Lender owned does explain a bit more of the increase- there were 431 lender owned listings the previous week, an increase of 202. That does explain the inventory. We may see more of that from lenders as a whole, but as I understand it, one lender in town is pulling all of their listings off the market in the next couple of weeks, as they take the process in house, apparently. Or they may choose to pull these homes off the market, temporarily, as prices seem to have bottomed out somewhat, and they may be able to get considerably more in the next several months. If their financial position has stabilized somewhat, they may feel it is worth the wait to do so. It will be interesting to see if this was an aberration, or if we have more increases in lender owned properties.
We also saw pending sales rise fairly sharply, which is a good sign that we will have continuing demand, at least through August and September. The AWC figure keeps rising, and out of that 5,178 single family AWC contracts, 4568 are noted as short sales. That seems high, but out of 24000 single family listings, over 25% of them are short sale listings. So, many of the homes under contract would be short sales, as they often are the homes had at the best prices and condition. Lender sales are often in worse shape than short sales, as the short saler has a motivation for upkeep. There is a growing distaste for this process, and th federal government has said they are going to prompt greater short sale success with the lenders, so perhaps this process will start going quicker. It should be noted as well that many short sales are NOT changed to AWC, as many sellers will keep these homes as active as it is desirable to try and find someone who will pay a better price, which can easily happen over the course of the months it takes to get a short sale through.
Interestingly, there were 230 short sales completed last week, and while the distribution of homes on the map usually follow the pattern of density of the metro area- meaning that Phoenix gets a high distribution of listings, sales, etc, on the map, short sales in Phoenix seem to be tougher to accomplish. Look at this map of the short sales from last week:
Very few short sales occurred in Phoenix. That could be an aberration, of course, but it seems like our subarbanites are more likely to ask banks to take a hit on the loan. Its more of a social experiment than valid real estate news, but it would be interesting to see if the incidence of lender foreclosures is higher in the core city or the suburbs.
In other items that are pointing to a more positive 4th quarter, consumer confidence was up. Consumers are just starting to shake off the cobwebs, some buying new cars, others are investing in homes. We also saw productivity rise sharply, which will show up in profitability in later quarters. Of course, this is usually at the expense of bloated payrolls, which have been slashed by companies big and small.
The gorilla out of its cage this week is the increase in single family lender-owned properties. We knew it was coming eventually, but we don't want it to be a trend. I would say that it is a fairly timid increase, as we have been told various times about the 5000-10000 in a month scenario. This looks like a little spike, and quite honestly is looking more and more that this is the result of so many homes going the short sale route that could take 90-120 days to complete, which is 3-4 times as long as a normal escrow. A thought I would leave you with is that if we have such a short sale loaded AWC category, how many potential short sales are there still sitting in the Active category? I myself have 4 short sale deals I am working on, and only one of them has been changed to AWC, the rest the agents have left as active. That is in land, people, not houses, so you can imagine how many "invisible" residential contracts are out there right now. Hopefully, that process begins to speed up, as it is beginning to clog the system.
PENDINGS UP SHARPLY, AWC UP AGAIN
Rise in inventory attributable to Lender -owned listings...
PENDING SALES: 12,368 ( +340 from last week)
Pending Sing. Fam: 11,005 ( +278 from last week)
AWC: 5,827 ( +126 from last week)
AWC Sing. Fam: 5,178 ( +102 from last week)
Closed Escrows: 1,412 ( -1362 from last week)
Closed Single Fam: 1,243 ( -1194 from last week)
Active Listings: 31,546 (+215 from last week)
Active Single Fam: 24,064 (+221 from last week)
Closed MTD (8-9-09): 1526
Closed MTD SFam: 1,342
The big news of the week is that active listing rose for the first time in quite a while. The reason for this was a sharp weekly increase in single family listings. There were 753 new single family listings compared to the week before. Its highly likely that some lender pushed out a whole raft of inventory all at once to contribute to this rise. The other categories- condos, mobiles, townhomes, etc, were actually down slightly. Compared to the previous week, there were 100 more active listings put on the market in Phoenix, 42 more homes in Scottsdale, 29 more in Maricopa, 10 more in Mesa, and 9 more in Surprise.
There is no real discernable geographic pattern where the increase in listings is coming from. New weekly listings are broadly spread, as you can see, and would expect. The bulk of the listings, 1277 out of 1989 single family listings, occurred in the price range of 100K-500K. Only 633 of the 1989 were listed as lender-owned, however, which I found surprising. 535 were short sale properties. That number is not particularly high, as the previous weeks short sale listings were 466-this is not the source of the increase. Lender owned does explain a bit more of the increase- there were 431 lender owned listings the previous week, an increase of 202. That does explain the inventory. We may see more of that from lenders as a whole, but as I understand it, one lender in town is pulling all of their listings off the market in the next couple of weeks, as they take the process in house, apparently. Or they may choose to pull these homes off the market, temporarily, as prices seem to have bottomed out somewhat, and they may be able to get considerably more in the next several months. If their financial position has stabilized somewhat, they may feel it is worth the wait to do so. It will be interesting to see if this was an aberration, or if we have more increases in lender owned properties.We also saw pending sales rise fairly sharply, which is a good sign that we will have continuing demand, at least through August and September. The AWC figure keeps rising, and out of that 5,178 single family AWC contracts, 4568 are noted as short sales. That seems high, but out of 24000 single family listings, over 25% of them are short sale listings. So, many of the homes under contract would be short sales, as they often are the homes had at the best prices and condition. Lender sales are often in worse shape than short sales, as the short saler has a motivation for upkeep. There is a growing distaste for this process, and th federal government has said they are going to prompt greater short sale success with the lenders, so perhaps this process will start going quicker. It should be noted as well that many short sales are NOT changed to AWC, as many sellers will keep these homes as active as it is desirable to try and find someone who will pay a better price, which can easily happen over the course of the months it takes to get a short sale through.
Interestingly, there were 230 short sales completed last week, and while the distribution of homes on the map usually follow the pattern of density of the metro area- meaning that Phoenix gets a high distribution of listings, sales, etc, on the map, short sales in Phoenix seem to be tougher to accomplish. Look at this map of the short sales from last week:
Very few short sales occurred in Phoenix. That could be an aberration, of course, but it seems like our subarbanites are more likely to ask banks to take a hit on the loan. Its more of a social experiment than valid real estate news, but it would be interesting to see if the incidence of lender foreclosures is higher in the core city or the suburbs.In other items that are pointing to a more positive 4th quarter, consumer confidence was up. Consumers are just starting to shake off the cobwebs, some buying new cars, others are investing in homes. We also saw productivity rise sharply, which will show up in profitability in later quarters. Of course, this is usually at the expense of bloated payrolls, which have been slashed by companies big and small.
The gorilla out of its cage this week is the increase in single family lender-owned properties. We knew it was coming eventually, but we don't want it to be a trend. I would say that it is a fairly timid increase, as we have been told various times about the 5000-10000 in a month scenario. This looks like a little spike, and quite honestly is looking more and more that this is the result of so many homes going the short sale route that could take 90-120 days to complete, which is 3-4 times as long as a normal escrow. A thought I would leave you with is that if we have such a short sale loaded AWC category, how many potential short sales are there still sitting in the Active category? I myself have 4 short sale deals I am working on, and only one of them has been changed to AWC, the rest the agents have left as active. That is in land, people, not houses, so you can imagine how many "invisible" residential contracts are out there right now. Hopefully, that process begins to speed up, as it is beginning to clog the system.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
MLS STATS 7/27-8/2/09/09
**JULY SALES TOP 9000**
Active Listings Drop again.
National Housing News turns positive.
PENDING SALES: 12,028 ( -814 from last week)
Pending Sing. Fam: 10,727 ( -704 from last week)
AWC: 5,701 ( +11 from last week)
AWC Sing. Fam: 5,076 ( +19 from last week)
Closed Escrows: 2,774 ( +921 from last week)
Closed Single Fam: 2,437 ( +790 from last week)
Active Listings: 31,331 ( -364 from last week)
Active Single Fam: 24,043 ( -307 from last week)
CLOSED IN JULY: 9,096
Closed Single Fam: 7,987
July finished up with just enough kick to top 9000 sales for the month; this figure is less than June's Sales of approx 9300, but then it always is. Still, July was a very good month for inventory reduction and sales increases, as inventory has continued to fall, although at a slower pace than it had. Inventory is not going to fall to zero, so we are starting to reach the bottom of inventory's elasticity, especially given the current economic realities. We are doing very well considering the challenges. We are now at 3.01 months of single family inventory, and and about 3.4 months overall. This is a very sustainable level; it is probably the appropriate level that will cause home prices to bounce back to what I would refer to as natural levels. Median prices remained relatively stable from June to July, with the admittedly small sample size of August showing a slight uptick already. The direction of prices is going to go up, of that we can be sure. The prices are currently deflated, but this condition will not last forever as psychology improves with the positive news coming from seemingly every corner of the housing industry. What I can point out price wise is that dollar volume for single family sales outstripped June's total by $7,500,000. This might seem insignificant, except that were more than 250 more homes sold in June than July, and this translates to about an average $12,000 per home increase in price. This is not the median, but the average. This shows that prices are getting better, even as the median continues to be held down by the sheer number of low end homes being sold. There are even seems to be a little more movement in the million dollar market, as 91 homes sold in July at $1,000,000 plus. This is about a 1/3 increase over just a few months ago.
Regarding current inventory, I suspect we may see a little spike coming up as it seems lenders have been holding back foreclosures to take advantage of a new state law that is supposed to go in effect in September that would allow them to pursue the owners for a deficiency judgment. This law was written poorly in the middle of the stream, and a pretty big outcry has forced even its sponsor (Pierce, Prescott, AZ) to recant it, and it is likely going to be repealed. Its possible the lenders were waiting on this law to go into effect, so there might be a spurt of new actives coming on line if they decide to accelerate the foreclosure process, as there would be no advantage to them to hold off any longer. I am not positive of this effect, but it seems reasonable that there will be some spike in inventory. Of course, demand may dispose of that quickly, as it has been doing with foreclosures all year, but we don't know how big a wave it will be, nor do we know how well demand will hold up.
I don't normally like to give a reading list of news articles, but working this many into a coherent paragraph would require more time than I have today. So here are several articles from around the web that are starting to change the psychology around the housing market. They are wide-ranging and realistic, and I think they can start to be believed as more than cheerleading for the industry. Especially the Case-Schiller data- they are like listening to the resigned-to-a-nuclear-war BBC announcer in the sixties with the doomsday clock ticking in the background normally- pessimism and destruction on its way, all the time. If they are acknowledging better numbers, we have likely bumped bottom. Here is the list, should you care to follow the articles:
Pending Home Sales Rise: CNBC
Case Schiller Reports Reversing: Realty Times
Local: Builders report positive signs: AZ Republic
Foreclosures Stabilize in Arizona: AZ Republic
Builders find success with smaller homes: KTAR
Signs of Hope in California Housing: CNBC
Now, you may not want to read all of these, but the point really is that there seems to be some really good news out there developing in the housing industry, and it is about time. The news is there, which is critical to turning around the psychology of malaise that the industry has suffered through for the last several years. We are hoping for a strong month of August, and we will need to see if pendings pop back up after their sharp end of the month drawdown in July.
It was a very good month of July, and a very good week, as the positive news seems to be tumbling out all over. Hopefully it will continue.
chris
Active Listings Drop again.
National Housing News turns positive.
PENDING SALES: 12,028 ( -814 from last week)
Pending Sing. Fam: 10,727 ( -704 from last week)
AWC: 5,701 ( +11 from last week)
AWC Sing. Fam: 5,076 ( +19 from last week)
Closed Escrows: 2,774 ( +921 from last week)
Closed Single Fam: 2,437 ( +790 from last week)
Active Listings: 31,331 ( -364 from last week)
Active Single Fam: 24,043 ( -307 from last week)
CLOSED IN JULY: 9,096
Closed Single Fam: 7,987
July finished up with just enough kick to top 9000 sales for the month; this figure is less than June's Sales of approx 9300, but then it always is. Still, July was a very good month for inventory reduction and sales increases, as inventory has continued to fall, although at a slower pace than it had. Inventory is not going to fall to zero, so we are starting to reach the bottom of inventory's elasticity, especially given the current economic realities. We are doing very well considering the challenges. We are now at 3.01 months of single family inventory, and and about 3.4 months overall. This is a very sustainable level; it is probably the appropriate level that will cause home prices to bounce back to what I would refer to as natural levels. Median prices remained relatively stable from June to July, with the admittedly small sample size of August showing a slight uptick already. The direction of prices is going to go up, of that we can be sure. The prices are currently deflated, but this condition will not last forever as psychology improves with the positive news coming from seemingly every corner of the housing industry. What I can point out price wise is that dollar volume for single family sales outstripped June's total by $7,500,000. This might seem insignificant, except that were more than 250 more homes sold in June than July, and this translates to about an average $12,000 per home increase in price. This is not the median, but the average. This shows that prices are getting better, even as the median continues to be held down by the sheer number of low end homes being sold. There are even seems to be a little more movement in the million dollar market, as 91 homes sold in July at $1,000,000 plus. This is about a 1/3 increase over just a few months ago.
Regarding current inventory, I suspect we may see a little spike coming up as it seems lenders have been holding back foreclosures to take advantage of a new state law that is supposed to go in effect in September that would allow them to pursue the owners for a deficiency judgment. This law was written poorly in the middle of the stream, and a pretty big outcry has forced even its sponsor (Pierce, Prescott, AZ) to recant it, and it is likely going to be repealed. Its possible the lenders were waiting on this law to go into effect, so there might be a spurt of new actives coming on line if they decide to accelerate the foreclosure process, as there would be no advantage to them to hold off any longer. I am not positive of this effect, but it seems reasonable that there will be some spike in inventory. Of course, demand may dispose of that quickly, as it has been doing with foreclosures all year, but we don't know how big a wave it will be, nor do we know how well demand will hold up.
I don't normally like to give a reading list of news articles, but working this many into a coherent paragraph would require more time than I have today. So here are several articles from around the web that are starting to change the psychology around the housing market. They are wide-ranging and realistic, and I think they can start to be believed as more than cheerleading for the industry. Especially the Case-Schiller data- they are like listening to the resigned-to-a-nuclear-war BBC announcer in the sixties with the doomsday clock ticking in the background normally- pessimism and destruction on its way, all the time. If they are acknowledging better numbers, we have likely bumped bottom. Here is the list, should you care to follow the articles:
Pending Home Sales Rise: CNBC
Case Schiller Reports Reversing: Realty Times
Local: Builders report positive signs: AZ Republic
Foreclosures Stabilize in Arizona: AZ Republic
Builders find success with smaller homes: KTAR
Signs of Hope in California Housing: CNBC
Now, you may not want to read all of these, but the point really is that there seems to be some really good news out there developing in the housing industry, and it is about time. The news is there, which is critical to turning around the psychology of malaise that the industry has suffered through for the last several years. We are hoping for a strong month of August, and we will need to see if pendings pop back up after their sharp end of the month drawdown in July.
It was a very good month of July, and a very good week, as the positive news seems to be tumbling out all over. Hopefully it will continue.
chris
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