Sorry for late update, ran numbers but ran up to LA for a concert last night.
New listings 19 (19) – as expected last week was a lowside outlier. New listings bounced back up to normal range but not excessive at all
New Pendings of 23 (32) – pendings are pretty consistent from week to week
Thats -14
Closed sales at 17 – this is starting to show something I’ll explain later
Total houses for sale 86 (54) with median of $1.985M ($2M). Back up to where it was two weeks ago
A few things going on here. We are entering the time of year we typically see inventory rise and normal conditions would dictate about 2 more months of rising inventory though not a huge increase.
While new homes coming on the market can be roughly the same as new pendings we can and do see inventory rise for a couple reasons. First we see homes selling off market and getting entered into the MLS as pending so they dont hit the market as new listings. The other thing is we are seeing a higher fallout of escrow rate than we were seeing during the frenzy when it was so tough to get into escrow few would dare cancel. Despite the time lag between pendings and closings when we see closings consistently below the levels of pendings thats indicative of homes falling out of escrow.
I took a look at the inventory to see how sellers are reacting thus far. About 60% the inventory is on the market 3 weeks or less which is too early for a price change in most cases. If you havent see an offer in 3 weeks its generally the time to take a second look at your price.
There are 15 homes on the market for 21+ days under $2m. Of those 9 have had a price reduction mostly in homes listed by the more experienced agents. They are doing their jobs to find the market level something newer agents have no experience with.
Between $2 and 3M only 5 of 13 have reduced. I see a combination of inexperienced agents and likely ego driven sellers.
Above $3M only 3 of 12 reduced. Three things typically go on up here. These are more unique harder to value homes that get listed high and let market sort out value. Second, the market for these homes is much smaller and they always take longer. Last these often include weathier owners and/or longtime homeowners that will sell if they get their price but not if they dont.
Market as a whole is not doing anything unusual and indicative of shift away from frenzy into balance.
