As of today, the MLS reports 2,257 sales, which is NOT 15% off the 2006 total of 2,622 for April 2006. It’s only 14.15% less. That’s still pretty bad.
I don’t think this number is going to increase significantly from here.
YTD, we are down about 12% in terms of volume compared to the same first 4 months of 2006. 8,191 for 2007 vs. 9,335 for 2006. If we extrapolate that trend for the remainder of the year we’ll end up at about about 25,000 sales through the MLS for the year, which falls between 1997s 27,200 and 1996s 23,500.
The thing to remember is that we’ve added more than 10% to our regional SFR/condo supply since 1996, so as a percentage of inventory, our current volume of sales represents a smaller percentage of total inventory. I read that to mean that a 25,000 volume in 2007 would be even WORSE than a 23,000 volume in 1996.
