What I'm Watching...

Is there really good news in the market?  Possibly.  Listings on the market continued to decline for the 3rd straight week.  Inventory of homes are down 2.5% in the last 3 weeks.  At the same time new pending sales contract have increased each week for the past 5 weeks. - increasing 10 percent in this time.  More pending sales and fewer available listings lead to lower supply. Currently there is a 25 month supply of homes. There are still some challenges for owners who are occupying the homes they are trying to sell.  One, there is fewer of them.  1 in 2 homes on the market this week are vacant - more than anytime in the recent market.  Two, the portion of the market offering either shortsale listings or bank repos continues to bulge and now accounts for more than 1 in 4 homes currently being offered for sale.   Bank repos account for the twice their marketshare in portion of closed homes.  Due to this, prices are dropping and doing so at a rate faster than anytime this year.  Depending on home size,  median prices have declined 4 to 6% in just the last 60 days.  Can owner occupant sellers afford to wait any longer to sell their homes?