June 2009 Resale Data Rodeo

Well, we sure do appear to be having a good old fashioned spring (and now summer) rally.

At least as measured by the size-adjusted median, prices put in their third month of gains. While the size-adjusted median was up a demure 1.4% on the month for single family homes, it rocketed upward 9.1% for condos.

The plain vanilla median looked not all that different, with single family homes up a bit more and condos a bit less:

My proxy for the Case-Shiller index, based on a 3-month average of the single family size-adjusted median, turned up accordingly:

This directionally matches up with the calculations being done by Pigg Eugene over at sdhpi.blogspot.com.

Inventory was slightly higher for the month but remains quite low compared to the last few years:

And here is the very first graph showing the mix of illusory "reverse-shadow" inventory versus "actually available" inventory, as so aptly described by Pigg urbanrealtor here.

I will be updating this each month, as you might expect.

Volume, meanwhile, was good once again. Rates didn’t really jump until June, so we haven’t yet seen to what extent the rise in rates might impact sales activity.

At June’s sales pace, we were at just over 4 months’ worth of inventory — and that includes the illusory reverse-shadow inventory. Eyeballing it from the first graph, if we pulled out illusory inventory we’d be closer to 3 months of inventory.

The price increases charted earlier in this article should come as no surprise given the amount of competition for what little inventory is out there. There’s little question that a genuine spring/summer rally is underway (at least on an aggregate countywide basis). The question is how long it will last. There are some longer-term threats to the market, notably shadow inventory and the potential for higher eventual mortgage rates. But for right now, with inventory so tight in comparison to demand and (as of last month, anyway) getting tighter, the rally lives on.