ARMLS STATS 1/11/2010

2009 Sales Top 92,000 Closings

PENDING: 10,125
Pending Single Fam: 8,823

AWC: 5,955
AWC Sfam: 5,140

Closed: 1,029
Closed Sfam: 881

CLOSED 2009: 92,336
Closed Sfam: 81,425

Active: 34,199
Active Sfam: 26,756

Activity is very slow during the first few weeks of January, so not much to report. The most interesting thing is that we topped 92,000 sales in 2009. Here are the annual sales in the last decade:

2000: 55,400
2001: 62,523
2002: 68,411
2003: 79,512
2004: 98,294
2005: 104,133
2006: 74,106
2007: 54,231
2008: 59,233
2009: 92,336

One could look at this and say 2009 was the third best month of the decade, and that obviously isn't true. The sales were there, but of course the prices were much lower. It is encouraging that people have faith in the market, and are buying. We have had a massive deflation, not just in real estate, so we have to keep that in mind. Food prices have been falling, your cost of buying consumer electronics falls all the time, the price of clothing has come down substantially as suppliers have had to accept less profit, and the price of furnishings has decreased. Energy prices have fallen from their peak, but they have been rising again. Unfortunately, your fees and taxes have gone up, please remember to thank your elected officials....By and large though, Home prices have fallen along with everything else, and in addition slipped further due to its falling out of favor (temporarily) as an asset class. That will change, as it is a necessity none of us can do without.

The point is, we have had a very good year for sales; prices may not be there yet, but we at least have demand for the inventory that is there. We still have a great situation in this state- fine weather, a growing diversity in our economy, fairly good infrastructure, and proximity and one might say ground zero for the population migration of the baby boomers. There is much to be optimistic about, but we are just not out of the woods yet on the housing issues, as the financial crisis ruined the trust relationships banks and business had. Banks won't lend, businesses won't expand because they are afraid of the economy. We are still working through this, and may be well through 2010. It will be interesting where we are in March in terms of demand for housing; it is going to give us a good indication of the speed of sales recovery for the rest of the year.

ARMLS STATS 12/29/09

***Closed Escrows Reach 90K+ for '09***

Active listings up slightly over the last several weeks.

Pending: 10,453 Previous Week (*NA)
Pending Sfam: 9,116 Previous Week (*NA)

AWC: 6,038 (Not Available)

AWC SFAM: 5,248 N/A)

Closed 12/21-12/27/09: 1,208 (Last Week: 1,815)

Closed Single Fam: 1,043 (Last Week: 1,519)

Active Listings: 34,174

Active Sfam: 26,593

Closed thru 12/27: 5,646

Closed Sfam: 4,880

I apologize for not posting the last few weeks, as I have been extremely busy, and with December being a relatively nondescript month in home sales, there was not much interesting going to happen anyway. Here is what we have. As expected, pendings tend to slide a bit during the holidays, and this year is no different. We won't see that activity pick up again until February, most likely. We will see inventory picking up until that time as well, as many people put their homes on the market after the first of the year. Sales for December are going to be less than previous months, but this is expected for December. It is still not a bad month, with sales likely topping 7000, although the last week is hard to predict here. We are at over 6000 including yesterday, so we might see a little flourish that puts us over 7000. Last December sales totaled 5451 for the whole month, and was about 4300 through the 27th, so we can expect another 1000-1200 sales from our current position, I think. We have reached 90,000 sales, which is a pretty good year for sales. Inventory is still too high, but we might see that being reduced substantially by May once the spring buying season heats up. It is not likely to be as dramatic as last year, but it still looks likely. Prices are likely to flatten a little bit locally, as buying pressure decreases in the winter, but will pick up again in March and April.

Pricing will be a key issue this upcoming year. I do think we will be flat if not down over the next few months. When we start seeing a push in buyer activity beginning in late February, we will see upward price pressure again.

This chart is courtesy of MLS, and it shows some of the trends for the past year. We have improved our situation pretty dramatically since January of last year. Prices have stabilized, and while they may bump along for a few months, we still will see an increase by this time next year- probably a fairly substantial one.

I wish you all a very happy new year, and hope that we will have a lot of good things to discuss about our industry going forward!

chris

Active Listings Up
Only 1/3 of new listings this week are lender-owned.
Another 500+ are short-sale listings.
3,065 of November Sales were Bank-Owned.

Pending: 10,905 ( +84 from last week)
Pending Sfam: 9,535 ( +67 from last week)

AWC: 6,244 (+112 from last week)
AWC SF: 5,472 ( +99 from last week)

Closed 11/30-12/6 2,204 ( +614 from last week)
Closed Sfam: 1,902 ( +510 from last week)

Active Listings: 33,903 ( +428 from last week)
Active Sfam: 26,346 ( +362 from last week)


Here is a little data to place in historical perspective that you might find interesting.

Year to Date Sales: 84,848 (Through 11/30/09)
2003: 79,512
2004: 98,294
2005: 104,133
2006: 74,106
2007: 54,231
2008: 59,225
2009: Likely to top 90,000 sales.

New listings for the week were 2,488. About 800 were bank listings, far less than what I expected. I just envisioned that as being higher.

I am swamped today, so no analysis. I did pull the number of bank-owned sales in November, and I was surprised that the number wasn't higher. I was also surprised to see that bank-owned didn't make up a larger portion of the new listings from the last week. I checked last year's inventory levels for this week, and they all climbed in the first week of December, before starting to fall off a bit. If the number of new listing was massively lender-related, I would be more concerned that the number wouldn't be falling over the course of December. It still might not, but its playing pretty close to the seasonal factors right now.

Have a great week.