want a good deal – Yes keeping track of the number of pendings that fall out would be a good idea… seems like Rustico already volunteered me for it… Well he owed me one but I will have to decline.
While it is a useful stat I think that tracking the overall sales volumes will be good enough. As long as they continue to show about a 20% yoy decline per month then we are still sailing along through the downtrend.
BSR –
Yes it is possible but again manual. One can go ahead and set an MLS search up with a minimum price value and then an off market date range for previously sold properties. Do this for enough months and you can see a trend if any trend is evident but this will only be for the properties that sold. It would not factor in properties that did not sell.
You can also set up a manual search to find out how many properties were on the market for all solds, expireds, cancelleds, and withdrawns and search for an original list date in any range but again, way manual…
I think that someone could make some good money creating a better GUI for the MLS to allow a more robust search mechanism for compiling data. The one they have now is pitiful…
Larry – Since you want a 1.3-1.8M home you are my new best friend…
Rustico Rustico Rustico… You better be putting me on your payroll soon. Once the recession hits and I loose my engineering job I will hope you will employ me somehow…
******
As I said, there is no doubt the credit crunch will provide a new plateau so to speak but it is way to early IMO to make assessments on the overall effect. I think the past few weeks were a bit of an overreaction. I expect things to loosen up but not alot… then I expect another round of contraction with the next wave of bad news…. this could be a recurring effect over the next few years… Between the crunch, foreclosures, arm resets, psychology, it is hard to tell which factor is most responsible at any given time. That is why I think sales volume will be most reliable. At some point I think sales volume will level off and then median price will come down more appreciably then it has…