[Bugs]

DWCAP,

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.

[Bugs]

DWCAP,

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.

[Bugs]

DWCAP,

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.

[Bugs]

DWCAP,

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.

[Bugs]

DWCAP,

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.

[Bugs]

Nobody knows what effect the increased availability of the information will have on emerging trends. As time goes on the blogs like Piggington’s contribute tremendously to the ability of Joe Average to access and analyze the data for themselves.

How many people, prior to coming to this site, had the “feeling” that things weren’t right but no way to back that intuition up with data and analysis? Those people who choose to avail themselves of this information need never feel like they’re taking an uninformed risk ever again. They wont need to rely solely on their friends or their brokers for advice with respect to macro market conditions.

I think this is one of the factors contributing to why these prices are falling as fast as they are on the bottom end. When the second wave of ARM resets comes on next year I think it will contribute to the collapse of the upper end too.

However, this increased availability could prevent the pricing structure from significantly overcorrecting, too. If that happens then it might signify a trend for cycles with much smaller high-low extremes going forward.

It’s possible that the timing for your future purchases could depend more on prevailing mortgage interest rates than on sales prices because pricing will become more dependent on the financing than on NAR commercials on TV.

Another unknown is the impact of our changing demographics and exactly how many boomers will be in a financial position to retire in place. What will the employment options be for the younger workers going forward and how will those options affect their capacity to service their mortgages?

There are so many unknowns. On the surface I can see no reason to believe that the answers to any of these unknowns will turn out to favor having an itchy trigger finger on a purchase transaction. But there’s no way to really know the future before it gets here.

[Bugs]

Nobody knows what effect the increased availability of the information will have on emerging trends. As time goes on the blogs like Piggington’s contribute tremendously to the ability of Joe Average to access and analyze the data for themselves.

How many people, prior to coming to this site, had the “feeling” that things weren’t right but no way to back that intuition up with data and analysis? Those people who choose to avail themselves of this information need never feel like they’re taking an uninformed risk ever again. They wont need to rely solely on their friends or their brokers for advice with respect to macro market conditions.

I think this is one of the factors contributing to why these prices are falling as fast as they are on the bottom end. When the second wave of ARM resets comes on next year I think it will contribute to the collapse of the upper end too.

However, this increased availability could prevent the pricing structure from significantly overcorrecting, too. If that happens then it might signify a trend for cycles with much smaller high-low extremes going forward.

It’s possible that the timing for your future purchases could depend more on prevailing mortgage interest rates than on sales prices because pricing will become more dependent on the financing than on NAR commercials on TV.

Another unknown is the impact of our changing demographics and exactly how many boomers will be in a financial position to retire in place. What will the employment options be for the younger workers going forward and how will those options affect their capacity to service their mortgages?

There are so many unknowns. On the surface I can see no reason to believe that the answers to any of these unknowns will turn out to favor having an itchy trigger finger on a purchase transaction. But there’s no way to really know the future before it gets here.

[Bugs]

Nobody knows what effect the increased availability of the information will have on emerging trends. As time goes on the blogs like Piggington’s contribute tremendously to the ability of Joe Average to access and analyze the data for themselves.

How many people, prior to coming to this site, had the “feeling” that things weren’t right but no way to back that intuition up with data and analysis? Those people who choose to avail themselves of this information need never feel like they’re taking an uninformed risk ever again. They wont need to rely solely on their friends or their brokers for advice with respect to macro market conditions.

I think this is one of the factors contributing to why these prices are falling as fast as they are on the bottom end. When the second wave of ARM resets comes on next year I think it will contribute to the collapse of the upper end too.

However, this increased availability could prevent the pricing structure from significantly overcorrecting, too. If that happens then it might signify a trend for cycles with much smaller high-low extremes going forward.

It’s possible that the timing for your future purchases could depend more on prevailing mortgage interest rates than on sales prices because pricing will become more dependent on the financing than on NAR commercials on TV.

Another unknown is the impact of our changing demographics and exactly how many boomers will be in a financial position to retire in place. What will the employment options be for the younger workers going forward and how will those options affect their capacity to service their mortgages?

There are so many unknowns. On the surface I can see no reason to believe that the answers to any of these unknowns will turn out to favor having an itchy trigger finger on a purchase transaction. But there’s no way to really know the future before it gets here.

[Bugs]

Nobody knows what effect the increased availability of the information will have on emerging trends. As time goes on the blogs like Piggington’s contribute tremendously to the ability of Joe Average to access and analyze the data for themselves.

How many people, prior to coming to this site, had the “feeling” that things weren’t right but no way to back that intuition up with data and analysis? Those people who choose to avail themselves of this information need never feel like they’re taking an uninformed risk ever again. They wont need to rely solely on their friends or their brokers for advice with respect to macro market conditions.

I think this is one of the factors contributing to why these prices are falling as fast as they are on the bottom end. When the second wave of ARM resets comes on next year I think it will contribute to the collapse of the upper end too.

However, this increased availability could prevent the pricing structure from significantly overcorrecting, too. If that happens then it might signify a trend for cycles with much smaller high-low extremes going forward.

It’s possible that the timing for your future purchases could depend more on prevailing mortgage interest rates than on sales prices because pricing will become more dependent on the financing than on NAR commercials on TV.

Another unknown is the impact of our changing demographics and exactly how many boomers will be in a financial position to retire in place. What will the employment options be for the younger workers going forward and how will those options affect their capacity to service their mortgages?

There are so many unknowns. On the surface I can see no reason to believe that the answers to any of these unknowns will turn out to favor having an itchy trigger finger on a purchase transaction. But there’s no way to really know the future before it gets here.

[Bugs]

Nobody knows what effect the increased availability of the information will have on emerging trends. As time goes on the blogs like Piggington’s contribute tremendously to the ability of Joe Average to access and analyze the data for themselves.

How many people, prior to coming to this site, had the “feeling” that things weren’t right but no way to back that intuition up with data and analysis? Those people who choose to avail themselves of this information need never feel like they’re taking an uninformed risk ever again. They wont need to rely solely on their friends or their brokers for advice with respect to macro market conditions.

I think this is one of the factors contributing to why these prices are falling as fast as they are on the bottom end. When the second wave of ARM resets comes on next year I think it will contribute to the collapse of the upper end too.

However, this increased availability could prevent the pricing structure from significantly overcorrecting, too. If that happens then it might signify a trend for cycles with much smaller high-low extremes going forward.

It’s possible that the timing for your future purchases could depend more on prevailing mortgage interest rates than on sales prices because pricing will become more dependent on the financing than on NAR commercials on TV.

Another unknown is the impact of our changing demographics and exactly how many boomers will be in a financial position to retire in place. What will the employment options be for the younger workers going forward and how will those options affect their capacity to service their mortgages?

There are so many unknowns. On the surface I can see no reason to believe that the answers to any of these unknowns will turn out to favor having an itchy trigger finger on a purchase transaction. But there’s no way to really know the future before it gets here.

[Bugs]

All real estate is local.

Locally, the total number of sales of homes and condos as reported through the MLS is down by 28% when compared to last year:

Year__Jan___Feb___Mar__Total
2007..1750..1851..2419..6020
2008..1308..1430..1595..4333
Chg___-25%__-23%__-34%__-28%

I had to recheck the numbers twice – especially for March – because I couldn’t believe how bad they look.

Not only that, but February 2008 had 1 additional day (leap year). If not for the extra day, it would have come in at 1260 sales, or almost 32% below Feb 2007.

I don’t suppose I need to remind anyone here that yr2007 was the worst year for sales in terms of volume since 1996. Unless the trend from the 1st quarter completely reverses it looks like 2008 might be the worst year since the mid-1980s, back when we had 20% fewer housing units.

We currently have 18660 actives and 5148 pendings reported in the MLS for SD County. Add those together and you come out to 23808; divide by 2000 (avg Monthly closed sales) and that comes out to almost 12 months of inventory vs. closed sales.

I know some people like to count the pendings as sales, but really, they don’t count toward the monthly rate of sales until they close.

[Bugs]

All real estate is local.

Locally, the total number of sales of homes and condos as reported through the MLS is down by 28% when compared to last year:

Year__Jan___Feb___Mar__Total
2007..1750..1851..2419..6020
2008..1308..1430..1595..4333
Chg___-25%__-23%__-34%__-28%

I had to recheck the numbers twice – especially for March – because I couldn’t believe how bad they look.

Not only that, but February 2008 had 1 additional day (leap year). If not for the extra day, it would have come in at 1260 sales, or almost 32% below Feb 2007.

I don’t suppose I need to remind anyone here that yr2007 was the worst year for sales in terms of volume since 1996. Unless the trend from the 1st quarter completely reverses it looks like 2008 might be the worst year since the mid-1980s, back when we had 20% fewer housing units.

We currently have 18660 actives and 5148 pendings reported in the MLS for SD County. Add those together and you come out to 23808; divide by 2000 (avg Monthly closed sales) and that comes out to almost 12 months of inventory vs. closed sales.

I know some people like to count the pendings as sales, but really, they don’t count toward the monthly rate of sales until they close.

[Bugs]

All real estate is local.

Locally, the total number of sales of homes and condos as reported through the MLS is down by 28% when compared to last year:

Year__Jan___Feb___Mar__Total
2007..1750..1851..2419..6020
2008..1308..1430..1595..4333
Chg___-25%__-23%__-34%__-28%

I had to recheck the numbers twice – especially for March – because I couldn’t believe how bad they look.

Not only that, but February 2008 had 1 additional day (leap year). If not for the extra day, it would have come in at 1260 sales, or almost 32% below Feb 2007.

I don’t suppose I need to remind anyone here that yr2007 was the worst year for sales in terms of volume since 1996. Unless the trend from the 1st quarter completely reverses it looks like 2008 might be the worst year since the mid-1980s, back when we had 20% fewer housing units.

We currently have 18660 actives and 5148 pendings reported in the MLS for SD County. Add those together and you come out to 23808; divide by 2000 (avg Monthly closed sales) and that comes out to almost 12 months of inventory vs. closed sales.

I know some people like to count the pendings as sales, but really, they don’t count toward the monthly rate of sales until they close.

[Bugs]

All real estate is local.

Locally, the total number of sales of homes and condos as reported through the MLS is down by 28% when compared to last year:

Year__Jan___Feb___Mar__Total
2007..1750..1851..2419..6020
2008..1308..1430..1595..4333
Chg___-25%__-23%__-34%__-28%

I had to recheck the numbers twice – especially for March – because I couldn’t believe how bad they look.

Not only that, but February 2008 had 1 additional day (leap year). If not for the extra day, it would have come in at 1260 sales, or almost 32% below Feb 2007.

I don’t suppose I need to remind anyone here that yr2007 was the worst year for sales in terms of volume since 1996. Unless the trend from the 1st quarter completely reverses it looks like 2008 might be the worst year since the mid-1980s, back when we had 20% fewer housing units.

We currently have 18660 actives and 5148 pendings reported in the MLS for SD County. Add those together and you come out to 23808; divide by 2000 (avg Monthly closed sales) and that comes out to almost 12 months of inventory vs. closed sales.

I know some people like to count the pendings as sales, but really, they don’t count toward the monthly rate of sales until they close.

[Bugs]

All real estate is local.

Locally, the total number of sales of homes and condos as reported through the MLS is down by 28% when compared to last year:

Year__Jan___Feb___Mar__Total
2007..1750..1851..2419..6020
2008..1308..1430..1595..4333
Chg___-25%__-23%__-34%__-28%

I had to recheck the numbers twice – especially for March – because I couldn’t believe how bad they look.

Not only that, but February 2008 had 1 additional day (leap year). If not for the extra day, it would have come in at 1260 sales, or almost 32% below Feb 2007.

I don’t suppose I need to remind anyone here that yr2007 was the worst year for sales in terms of volume since 1996. Unless the trend from the 1st quarter completely reverses it looks like 2008 might be the worst year since the mid-1980s, back when we had 20% fewer housing units.

We currently have 18660 actives and 5148 pendings reported in the MLS for SD County. Add those together and you come out to 23808; divide by 2000 (avg Monthly closed sales) and that comes out to almost 12 months of inventory vs. closed sales.

I know some people like to count the pendings as sales, but really, they don’t count toward the monthly rate of sales until they close.

[Author]

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