We started off this year with an average of 1.5 homes going under contract on a daily basis. Home Inventory numbers going into the New Year were hovering around 685 homes. It has never been more apparent to me that we were a community that had a glut of inventory.
Move to the present day and we have seen a decline of housing inventory by 38% to today's number 426 homes on the market. Total homes under contract and pending settlement is an astonishing 200 on the nose. To put this into perspective that is more than was sold in March 2004 (close to the height of the boom market). Should this trend continue at this pace we should anticipate a stable local real estate market by the beginning of the 3rd quarter.
Breakdown of the 200 pending settlement properties is as follows and the results it provides:
86 Short sales are under contract - This could potentially put a burden of the local rental market which currently only has 110 available rentals (not including apartments). The keeper investor may find it quite easy to rent their investment properties.
52 Owner Occupied homes under contract - These folks generally buy another home and may well be taking advantage of the lower move up prices and low interest rates. If they are purchasing another home we can anticipate further reduction to our inventory numbers and the best properties being sold in the next 30 days.
The remaining 62 properties were bank owned and were predominately in the lower price range i.e. Less than $300,000.
I will keep you posted if I see any additional changes to the housing supply, but as I mentioned in the past the ship is in port and we can assume it will be leaving sooner rather than later.
Check out my blogpost 9 December 2008 http://limejuicerrealestate.blogspot.com/2008/12/who-are-jones-anyway.html
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