Here in St. Louis, the market seemed to spark (based upon my unscientific method of monitoring how often my phone rings with a property call or a showing appointment), but then died back again.  Got my fingers crossed that my efforts at rain making will pay off and that the market will follow!

Bob

Phoenix is continuing to be busy - sounds like builders are following the same path as those in Las Vegas.

Renee,

It does not have to be with this topic, but I noticed here in Colorado that some builders are desperate to sell and they give to realtors great incentives coop and also very good incentives to customers, I believe that it is happening everywhere.

"SalesTraq showed 21,220 homes on the Multiple Listing Service in February, nearly a 50 percent increase from a year ago and a supply of 12.2 months at current sales levels."

 Yikes

 "Existing home Las Vegas listings have grown, but so have the pendings!"

Now that's what I call finding a silver lining.  :)

Bob:  That's how I felt about February.  It seems to be picking up again!

Tony:  Luckily they are! 

Ray:  Our incentives disappeared back several months ago along with entry level standing inventory.  I am feeling the buyers are starting to filter into the resale market.

John:  The 21,220 number dropped from October/November highs.  Of course it is going to sound sensational to report that it is up so much!  They pretty much went up 25% from spring to summer last year and have pretty much sustained that number.  Listings did just disappear before November but the number gradually rose after Jan 1.  I just checked the pending number and we have 20 more pendings (3480) than we did yesterday.  This is awesome news!         

Hi Renee, it's good that there are 20 more pendings today, but how many new listings are there?  Sometimes I get the feeling that you are kind of playing the LV real estate cheerleader rather than giving accurate, impartial information.  I only bring this up because this was not a "Members Only" post.  IMHO, one of the reasons Broker Bryant is the best blogger on AR is that he calls a spade a spade.  When things are bad, he says so; when he finally says things are good again, I'm gonna believe it.   Just my 2 cents.

John S Writes:

Hi Renee, it's good that there are 20 more pendings today, but how many new listings are there?  Sometimes I get the feeling that you are kind of playing the LV real estate cheerleader rather than giving accurate, impartial information.  I only bring this up because this was not a "Members Only" post.  IMHO, one of the reasons Broker Bryant is the best blogger on AR is that he calls a spade a spade.  When things are bad, he says so; when he finally says things are good again, I'm gonna believe it.   Just my 2 cents.

I do agree that BB is one of the best out there but in reality he is on the east coast in a completely separate market.  Is he landlocked around mountains where growth is stifled?  Does he have 5000-6000 new residents in his market every month?  What I am getting at is there is VERY limited supply of available land in this valley and the residential building permits are down so far that we are beginning to see the new construction buyers trickle in to the resale market.   

Will I deny that we are saturated with inventory?  Nope.  Is it hopeless out there?  Nope.  Cheerleader?  Maybe.  Probably because it is an INCREDIBLE time to buy when  you can pretty much get closing costs paid by a seller and deep discounts.  Building permits are down so far that even if we lose 25% of new construction buyers, there is still room to grow.

Where are all these new people going to live?  We only have so much land here! 

Did you fail to read my dismal post about subprime lending issues? It ain't all peaches and cream out there but it ain't all doom and gloom either.  New construction just posted it's second largest year in 2006.  Closed resales were it's third largest year in 2006.  Just because the inventory exists doesn't mean things aren't moving.

As far as new listings yesterday, I didn't keep track and I really don't care.  Why bother if stuff is moving?  Whey try to account for NON-MOTIVATED sellers?  Much of our inventory consists of that along with panic selling.   In the meantime rents continue to increase astronomically because of a shortage of rental inventory.

The new residents moving to LV is a good point; however, it is more of a long term effect on housing than a short term effect; otherwise, how could the inventory have gotten to 12 months?  Now you might say "who cares?", but if I were a buyer in the LV market looking for a realtor, I'd want one that cared, and I'd want one who kept track of the number of new listings in order to help me understand the market conditions and get me the best deal possible.  Now, if you only represent sellers, then that's a different matter, but if you're representing any buyers, I think this is important information to help insure your buyers don't overpay.

Renee

 John S Writes:

The new residents moving to LV is a good point; however, it is more of a long term effect on housing than a short term effect; otherwise, how could the inventory have gotten to 12 months?  Now you might say "who cares?", but if I were a buyer in the LV market looking for a realtor, I'd want one that cared, and I'd want one who kept track of the number of new listings in order to help me understand the market conditions and get me the best deal possible.  Now, if you only represent sellers, then that's a different matter, but if you're representing any buyers, I think this is important information to help insure your buyers don't overpay.

John:  If you could explain how inventory is relevant to a buyer outside the scope of their search, I will be all ears.  I had someone call me to list their condo last week and buy in the entry level single family market.  Tough.  Too much inventory in the condo market in their price range and not enough inventory in the single family market in their price range.  This is a huge challenge they are currently mulling over.  We would have to strategically plan this move to make it right and it wouldn't be easy at all!  Not enough equity to do a bridge loan and the condo has rental restrictions.  The LV market has many many micro markets that are not even normal for other parts of the US.  I knew enough about each micro market to let my potential seller and then buyer realize the challenge and make sure she was FULLY up to the task.  She was selling in a market of 14 months inventory and buying in a market with less than 5 months inventory.  If I told her there were 23,000 and some change listings and took her listing, now that would be a bit disingenuous would it not?  See, BB and I are very similar!  Inventory is only relevant in each micro market for ONLY the short term.  Understanding what is going on in the near future (and not necessarily long term) is more important.  I will blog about this later!

Aziz:   John is forcing me to post again on this issue.  It is interesting what is going on even with the sub prime challenges we have.  YAY CHIEFS!

It's comforting to see your optimism. Everything I have been reading suggests a flat mkt until end of 2007 and then a healthy turn into the next year.

I like the stats on your site too. Good way to present them.

Darren:  Thanks for stopping by and commenting.  I saw your post today on market conditions and it was a cup half full post too!  I just wonder why the person that has to troll me can't troll you and the couple of others that are posting optimism about our market!

Was I trolling because I disgreed?  Do you really want only agreement in the comments section?  No problem, I'll stop. 

 John S Writes: 

 John:  I love opinion and I respect other people's opinions so much that I do not resort to personal attacks such as you.  If your opinion and name calling disturbed me so much I can easily delete your comments. You say "cheerleader" as if it were a bad thing :hairtoss: and you have accused me of not caring about my job.  If you have stats to present along with your argument I will go there.  Otherwise I will label you as a troll.  So <back to our regularly scheduled programming> now you are going to tell me how inventory out of the scope of a buyer's search or a possible listing is relevant to the property at hand?

Hi Guys,

New here to AR(last week) and as an agent(under 2yrs) and reading this stuff, while entertaining, is also an encouragement to really get into the underlying cause/effect of the market in my area.  We are a bedroom community to DC and have watched prices skyrocket(for us) in the last three years.  And while there has been a leveling of prices, what I'm seeing is that as long as you're working, you're selling houses.  And frankly, everything else is just a tool to that end.  Thanks - and Renee, great blog topics.  I've enjoyed reading them.

Renee  I happen to like cheerleaders!  I bet you look so cute in your little pom skirt  :) 

Anyhow, if Realtors can't find the positive in the housing market, who will?  A wise person told me the other day:  "It's always a good market depending on how you look at it."  I suppose it really is....  if you're a good practitioner you're always going to have options for your sellers & buyers and there's no market condition that can't be overcome.  I was in grade school in the early '80s  (just rubbing it in) but as "bad" as the housing market was, there were a lot of people that made millions in real estate (and not all of them were unscrupulous).

I'm also a big fan of "knowing your numbers."  Keep doing what you do.  You do it well.

Very good discussion Renee, Not sure how I missed this one. My market, Poinciana Fl, seems to have come to a halt the last few weeks. It was starting to pick up pretty good and then the subprime fiasco hit. I lost 5 pendings and showing have come to a screeching halt. Most of my market is subprime so it's probably going to get quite a bit worse before the year is out. I'm hoping that once prices drop another 10% the investors will jump back into the game. Right now prices are still too high and rents are too low.

The good thing is that we still have the best value around. So folks that need to buy will still be in the market, assuming they can get qualified. The next few months should be very interesting.   

Anthony- she is very beautiful, but fantasizing her as a cheerleader...  Well, all I can say is pervert!

Great post with many good points Renee.  Great blog, as usual!

Anthony- she is very beautiful, but fantasizing her as a cheerleader...  Well, all I can say is: you dirty-minded, little pervert!  I'm kidding Anthony.  I'm sure you have no interest in seeing Renee in a pom skirt...  Right?

Great post with many good points Renee.  Great blog, as usual!

Renee: LOL. I think you write great posts. You often step further out on the limb than I do and you make your posts much more visible and draw a lot more agent reader traffic. Some of that traffic is going to be more opinionated than the localism reader traffic. I'm glad you back your claims with stats and other supporting documentation. It makes for more solid writing. If anything it helps me keep current with our own market...and I'm for keeping a positive outlook on the future. Keep 'em rollin'!

I'm curious why John S thinks listings are so relevant. The true health of a market is the pendings. And the fact that yours are going up on a daily basis is a good thing. Not so good for your Condo seller... but good for the market as a whole.

Jonathan:  Thank you for stopping by and your kind comments!

Anthony:  Proof positive!  Pom skirt...ROFL!

Bryant:  I sleep with one eyelid open.  I want to be depressed about all that is going on but it seems to still be positive.  It almost makes me confused!  Our market was picking up before our eyes in early Feb but with the subprime fiasco it stayed steady.  I am watching closings rise right now, we just picked up about 100 in the last couple of days after a month of flatlining.  :shrug: 

Karen:  Anthony is the only one allowed to do so :)

Darren:  :winks winks:

Debi:  Exactly.  You can talk about listings and list prices all day long.  Pendings and closeds are what really put a pulse on the market.