Friday, November 6th, 2009
This is getting VERY interesting! Here is the 10/31/09 Market Update Report.
The number of homes on the market continues to be down nearly 20% from last year, but the number of sales also continues to lag last year by a little more than 10%. Sales relative to new listings also continues to improve marginally, from 58% last year to 55% this year. And DOM continues to be about 2 weeks longer this year than last.
So what’s interesting? One, the fact that the numbers are roughly the same indicates we may be stabilizing—at bottom. But at least things aren’t getting worse.
The second surprise is that prices seem to be stabilizing—again, at bottom? Note that both the discount sellers suffer as they ‘dial in’ their price to attract an offer AND the discount sellers suffer in negotiating their selling price with their buyer are BOTH unchanged. Both these figures have shown deterioration as every month went by this year. For the first time, prices seem to be firming—at a total discount of 12.5% (which is horrible), but at least not worse.
Also, note that the median selling price has fallen only 2% from last year. Last month, the median selling price was down 10%.
We could be watching the market turn before our very own eyes. On the other hand, this could be a spike. So I’ll be eager to see next month’s report…
