The statistics shown below indicate how fast ... or s-l-o-w ... houses are selling in your area.

If you have to sell your house, you must take into account your community’s Absorption Rate. The concept is easy to understand once you understand the formula.

First, you must know how many homes sold over the last year.

Then you must determine the Absorption Rate, or average number of homes that have sold on a monthly basis.

From the Absorption Rate, you can easily estimate how fast the current inventory of available homes will sell.

The larger the current inventory—or ‘active listings’—the longer it will take any one home to sell.

If there are twice as many active listings available for sale than the current absorption rate, it will take twice the amount of time, or 2 months, to sell out current inventory, provided no new homes enter the market.

If there are three times as many active listings for sale than the current absorption rate, it will take three times the amount of time, or 3 months, to sell out current inventory.

The longer it takes for the current inventory to deplete, the more necessary it becomes for sellers to price their house in a strong competitive position versus all the other houses currently for sale.

It follows that the lower the price, the faster the sale.

If you’re a homeowner looking to sell your house in 2009, remember this: ‘Denial’ isn’t a river in Egypt. Denial is clinging to the notion that you can sell your house for more money than a buyer in today’s market is willingly to pay.

This is where a knowledgeable real estate agent becomes more important than ever, because the more familiar your agent is with the fluctuations of the current marketplace, the quicker you’re likely to sell your house. And in this unsure market, that means putting more money into your pocket.