I guess stability is in the eye of the beholder. I don’t call a market wherein there are 9.7 available listings for every single sale indicative of a market where prices will be stable. I wouldn’t even call it stable if it dropped to 6 listings per sale.
The raw number of listings may look somewhat stable or in decline, but the relationship between the number of listings vs. sales continues in decline due to the drop in sales activity. 23,000 listings back when we had a 29,000 sale year (2006) actually indicated to a somewhat more stable market than the current 20,800 listings in a 25,000 sale year (2007). Regardless, both ratios are bad news for price stability; they only differ by degree.
