Real Estate Trends October 2007
Team Weurding Realty
Last month I introduced you to the concept of “Market Velocity” and how it can be used to gauge sales activity in the real estate industry. In addition to keeping track of the number of active listings, along with the number of pending sales, the formula also takes into consideration the current market conditions. As you might imagine all of this is very fluid and can change dramatically when there is a shift in any of these factors.
That “shift” took place these past 30 days when the number of active listings either increased or held at last month’s totals, while the number of pending went down significantly across the board. I have been tracking the numbers since 1988, when I first became licensed as a Realtor, and I can not remember when the percentage of homes under contract (sold pending) has been so low. In all of San Diego County only 11.1% of the active inventory is in escrow. Put another way, 88.9% are still looking for a buyer. Unless something changes, that means we have 436 days worth of inventory to sell!
Thanks to the sagging number of sales, all of the zip codes in our marketplace also shot up this past month. With only 15 new sales, Poway now has 406 days of unsold homes. RB 92127 currently has 320 days of standing inventory, up from 187 days last month. RB 92128 went from 149 days worth of unsold inventory last month to 210 days today. And lastly, PQ jumped up from the previous low of 114 days to 222 days.
Some other numbers you might find interesting include: More than 53% of Poway ’s homes for sale are listed over $600K yet only 3.7% of them are in escrow. Of PQ’s 136 active listings only 5 are priced under $500K. In RB 92127 more than 56% of the listings are priced over 1 million dollars. Your best chance of finding a home under $500K is in RB 92128 but in many of them you have to be over 55 years young in order to qualify for the purchase.
In my opinion, the cause-for the large drop in sales is related to all the confusion within the banking industry, which can be fixed. It just might take awhile.
Source: Sandicor, MLS, and Dataquick
