Residential Real Estate Inventory Report for the week ending 4/14/07, Madison Guilford Clinton Killingworth Westbrook Connecticut

Inventory Report for 4/7/07, Madison Guilford Clinton Killingworth Westbrook Connecticut -  Real Estate Market Data 

Tom Burland http://www.ct-shore-homes.com/ 

This is an update to my previous report noting this past week's activity.

With this weeks data in it appears as if activity has increased with homes under contract increasing by approximately 50% hitting 33 homes vs the previous 6 week average of 22. This is the leading indicator. 

We are now in that time of year where it is important to track property inventory very closely.  The attached report shows total active inventory, new listings coming on to the market, Deposits, Under Contract, Closed, Expireds and Price Changes.  Looking at these numbers in two ways tells a story of a market beginning to stabilize.  First looking at Closed Sales relative to Active Inventory there remains a 10 month supply.  Second if you look at Under Contract relative to Active Inventory there is an approximate 6.5 month supply- or a trend toward reduced inventory.  I look at it in both views because closed sales are real properties off the market and under contract are much more recent events of properties that will go off the market in the near future.

New Listings are just that - recently listed properties "new" to the market - in reality some percentage of these are a re-contracting of expired listings.

Deposits show properties under contract that have cleared contingencies - near real time reflection of buyer activity.

Under Contract- are real time reflections of actual transactions, these are contracts written in the past week that have some contingencies involved.

Closed -are properties that have the total transaction completed in the past week, generally these are contracts written 45 to 60 days earlier.

Expireds - are properties that were on the market that didn't sell.

Price Changes - generally in this type of market are properties where list price has been reduced. This usually occurs after a property has been on the market for some time with little traffic and/or no or unacceptable offers.

All well and good, but what do the numbers tell us - generally new listings continue to run higher than properties being sold or contracted for, but the real number is to look at active listings - these are only properties were no contract has been written on.  If the inventory level rises it generally means we are still in a buyer's market and prices will remain stable or slightly decrease.

Now these are general market statistics, in all of these towns there are discrete segments that may be behaving differently.  One example of a segment is price range, another is location in town, another is style or number of bedrooms etc.  Realtors are equipped to interpret this data for customers to make sure properties are positioned correctly and offers make sense in the current market.