Market update at glance 1st quarter 2012

Here we are at the end of the March, ending the first quarter. Time flies when you are having fun, the first two months behaved like I expected, pretty much a slog, then March came. It behaved like someone turned on the faucet. The market has gone from where buyers definitely had the upper hand in negotiations to a balance in the market place, where neither buyer nor sellers have more power. The first thing that happens as this change takes place, buyers resist, and continue along the same path of low offers and asking for the world, only with the change, sellers with properties in decent condition and reasonable location don’t have to accept and can respond in a reasonable fashion and get their property sold.  The positive from the buyer’s side they can feel more comfortable that the market is at worst flat and most probably headed in a positive direction. With inventory running 29% below last year, pending sales up 15% and 30 year mortgagees at 4% plus the economy of Yellowstone county growing it appears the train is leaving the station of poor performance, albeit slowly yet a great positive. Other items of note are both new construction with a great improvement over last year in number of permits issued so far and fi you are and investor or owner of mutli family property availability is down and rents are starting to move up. If buyers elect not buy instead of rent this will put more pressure on rents and prices will increase faster, since the lead time and complexity of bring more rental units to market is huge stumbling block availability will stay constrained until rents make overcoming the problems of supplying new units profitable.  The market appears to progressing about 3 to 4 months faster than I thought it would so it will be interesting to see how this next quarter performs. Stay tuned!!!!!