June Resale Data Rodeo

Let’s do a quick review of the resale data for June.

As in May, the size-adjusted median fared much better for single family homes than for condos:

The size-adjusted median was down 2.1% for single family homes — not great but pretty typical — while it was down 5.8% for condos.

The plain vanilla condo median fared even worse — down an incredible 13.8% in a single month. The vanilla SFR median was down 3.7%.

As I wrote about last month, the fact that so-called investors are now out buying properties in the long-suffering low priced areas will likely skew the vanilla median (and perhaps the size-adjusted median, to a lesser degree) downward. So the vanilla median is even less informative than usual. That said, that 13.8% condo decline should make for some interesting DataQuick wrapups this month. Watch for a scramble to discredit the median coming from some of the same people who touted it when it was overstating prices in early 2007.

The Case-Shiller HPI proxy only includes single family homes (like the HPI itself) and so it forecasts a relatively mild 1.6% decline in June.

Volume was decent again, though concentrated in the low-end areas as previously discussed. Sales were almost as high as last June.

Overall inventory, meanwhile, once again declined against seasonal patterns and is now firmly negative year over year.

This led to another reduction in the months of inventory to 7.1, just below June 2007’s pre-credit crisis level:

The reduction in overall months of inventory is obviously a positive sign but it happens at a time of record foreclosure activity (this chart has not been updated for June yet):

So it seems that the inventory reduction may be less an issue of improving fundamentals than of "want to sell" sellers throwing in the towel as it becomes clear that foreclosures are the market. The downward price movements suggest that the foreclosures have the upper hand in setting prices.