January 2015 Housing Data Rodeo

Sorry Piggs, I didn’t get around to posting the December
numbers.  But let us not dwell on the past*, and instead
soldier on to the January numbers.

*Though if you really want to, the December data is all in the
charts below.

Home prices drifted down a bit, as might be expected given the
seasonality and the recent increase in months of inventory:

But here’s where it gets a little weird.  Closed sales
plummeted by 28% from December (look for the little green dot on the
4-year graphs to follow):

And yet, pending sales increased by 28% from December:

Now, some of the month to month stuff might be seasonal, but the
graphs show that there’s more to it.  Closed sales were down
24% year-over-year, while pending were up 25%. 

Well, “these*” data can be noisy month to month, so let’s see what
happens with this. 

* For most of my life, “data” was always singular (a singular mass
noun, to be specific — yes, I looked that up).  But all of a
(relative) sudden, you’re some kind of savage if you don’t pluralize
it. Or them. Or whatever.  But old habits die hard, as my
double spaces** between sentences don’t tell you.

** I remember getting in trouble in high school typing class for
single spacing after periods.  Now, only luddites
double-space.  Make up your mind, society!

Got a little off track there.

Inventory ended up just where it was at the beginning of the prior 2
years (which is kind of weird, actually);

Though active-only was a bit higher than last year, and quite a bit
higher than in 2013:

Months of inventory, which uses pending sales as the denominator,
dropped hard due to that big jump in pendings:

We haven’t seen a drop like this since early 2012:

And these charts overlaying months of inventory and price changes
show that inventory is back at levels that have coincided with
rising prices:

It will be very interesting to see where this goes next month. 
If it’s just noise in the data, then perhaps it will be back to
business as usual, with pretty steady prices.  But if the
increase in sales activity is for real — and there could be
something to that, given the free-fall in lending rates lately —
then we could be in for higher prices ahead.