Ooops, my bad. I was using last year’s average rate of sales, not this year’s. Sorry.
The current number of pendings could be indicative of a reversal of the trend for the first quarter, but I highly doubt it. For one thing, with this much inventory sitting around the panic motivation to buy now or lose forever just can’t happen. At most this might be a bounce, and you’d have to convince me that almost all the pendings will close within the next 5 weeks.
I highly doubt our region has 15,000 buyers who are ready willing and able to pull the trigger in the next 6 months. That’s what it would take to absorb the standing inventory sufficiently to start another bull run. Really, it would take a few more than that when you factor in the foreclosures and short sales that will be added in during the next 6-9 months.
One other factor that tells me that it’s going to remain tough is that the NAR is running commercials that tout the dream of homeownership outweighing the current costs. That tells me that even they know it’s going to be bad for the foreseeable future.
