Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Listing units are down significantly in September!
It's almost like someone is listening... for a change. There is some good news but before we get too excited, there is some not so good news as well. We'll leave that for a bit.
Listings:
Today total listings available for single family residence equals 757 (down from 785 in August). 290 are new construction homes and 467 are existing homes on the market.
There were 110 new listings for the month of September (168 in August). 1 home has already closed and 7 have entered contracts. The average asking price for these new listings is $225,539 (thats down from $266,750 last month). The median asking price is $191,750 (way down from $229,900 in August). It's great to see less number of units hitting the market and it's even better that they enter the market at a much more reasonable number. This is the lowest entering average price this year.
31 new construction homes listed (average asking price of $204,662, median asking price $195,001). Zero of these have closed this month and 2 have entered into contract.
79 existing homes listed (average asking price $233,720, median asking price $190,750). 1 of these has already closed and 5 more have entered contract.
Units under contract:
37 homes entered into contracts in the month of August (down from 59 in August). The average asking price for homes that received contracts was $216,683 (up from $227,619 in August) and the median asking price for July was $195,975 (up from $225,000 in August).
16 new construction homes entered into contract (average asking price $235,438, median asking price $209,950). These price numbers come back down to earth a bit as I did review the reasons to why the average and median prices for this category were so high last month. I've yet to see the final sales prices recorded on those new construction homes that made a large difference to the subset of numbers from last month. Look for that in the sales report in a couple of weeks.
21 existing homes entered into contract (average asking price $198,738, median asking price $185,000). The average and median prices are flucuating a bit here but are within an expected range.
The downside is there are less units that entered into contract than I expected. It seems the market is adjusting down to meet the buyers expectations yet the buyers still seem to be on hold (however we must remember that the usual best time for sales of homes has ended already and it is typical for less activity at this time). The silver lining may be the fact that there are less sellers entering the market overall, but more are entering at a better offering price ready to play ball and sell their property. If this is the start of a trend I think we'll see market balance around the corner. Good news for both buyers and sellers and hopefully it pans out that way.
I'm optimistic with the listing report and neutral on the homes under contract report. I have a feeling that sales will be down for August as compared to July but I won't know that until I do the report (and as always I need to wait for the data to settle on the MLS before I produce that report). If sellers really want to sell then they are heading in the right direction as far as I can see. Even the builders have reduced prices and I think that we all know that new construction sets the price for the market.
We'll still need to absorb the excess inventory and that could still take many months to accomplish, so buyers will still have the upper hand in negotitations well into 2007. Though I should say that while I'm not an economist, I play one on my blog (and it's plenty fun).
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