Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Shrinking Real Estate 57% fewer homes in OC

The number of homes listed for sale continues to drop, decreasing by 174 listings over the past two weeks (down 2%). That brings the new total to 7,749 listings as of Thursday, according to Aliso Viejo broker Steve Thomas.
  • The last time the Orange County housing market was this small: January 2006, when the slump was just getting started.
  • Last week’s listings are down 39% from a year ago, when there were 12,790 homes for sale; and it’s down 57% from the peak (17,898 listings in September 2007).
  • In addition, 3,166 new deals were signed in October, Thomas reported. That reflects a seasonal dip from this year’s selling peak of more than 3,600 new deals a month last spring.

Said Thomas:

“There is very little fresh, new inventory. The lower the range, the “spookier” it gets. Properties that are priced right and in great condition are flying off of the market with multiple offers and tremendous activity. Buyers new to the market are dumbfounded by all of the competition. Their expectations are of doom and gloom and the ability to “cherry pick” whatever home they are interested in AND at a discount. Yet, just about every agent has pockets filled with buyers who want to buy but have been unable to purchase after losing out on property after property.”

Thomas also calculates a “market time” benchmark tracking how many months it theoretically takes to sell all the inventory in the local MLS at the current pace of deal making. By Thomas’ logic:

  • It would take 2.45 months for buyers to gobble up all homes for sale at the current pace, little changed from 2.43 months two weeks ago. But that’s a lot less than 5.19 months a year ago and 14.06 months two years ago.
  • Homes listed for under a million bucks have a market time of 1.89 months (57 days) vs. 9.27 months for homes listed for more than $1 million.

Here’s the data, as of last Thursday, for listings; deals pending; market time in months; (note: k=thousand; m=million) last Thursday vs. 2 weeks ago, a year ago and 2 years ago …

Categories

Listed

Deals

Time (mo.)

2 wks. Ago

1 yr. ago

2 yr. ago

• $0-$250k

1,072

669

1.60

1.72

3.72

12.78

• $250-500k

1,994

1,357

1.47

1.42

3.72

12.78

• $500-750k

1,589

679

2.34

2.32

5.39

15.11

• $750-$1m

909

246

3.70

3.76

9.74

12.74

• $1-1.5m

784

132

5.94

6.46

12.40

15.02

• $1.5-2m

440

64

6.88

8.67

24.96

18.20

• $2m-4m

662

38

17.42

19.39

27.85

17.76

• $4m+

377

10

37.70

31.67

49.86

17.50

All O.C.

7,749

3,166

2.45

2.48

5.19

14.06

Ponder inventory trends:

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