How much inventory is in the market today?

How much inventory is in the market today?
by John Occhi, Hemet, Realtor
Originally written October 30, 2006

Originally posted here

I originally posted most of this article on another Blog that I started last month.  Like many agents, I've heard of Blogging and thought I would ‘check it out' and see how I could get involved.  Of course, when you first start out, it's sometimes difficult to weed through the technology and make the right decisions.

I thought about maintaining multiple Blogs - but hello, I have houses to sell.

So, I will go ahead and transfer what I believe to be worthwhile to my Active Rain, since I have now determined this is the place to be - do you guys agree?

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I thought I would start this morning with a snapshot look at the available inventory of homes for sale.

To determine a monthly figure of the current available inventory, I have to conduct several searches of the Hemet - San Jacinto MLS. I look to see how many actual homes are for sale with a mailing address of HEMET I find there are currently 716 homes for sale.

Let me clarify a little bit about this data. It includes homes that are both in the City of Hemet as well as unincorporated Riverside county areas, like Valle Vista. The key is they all use Hemet as a mailing address, in one of three zip codes: 92543,92544, & 92545.

For the most part these homes are what we call "Stick Built" - meaning they are a traditional construction homebuilt on site. Now there are rules that say a manufactured home on a permanent foundation can be classified as a house and not a manufactured home. Even though the MLS has a very specific section of its database for mobile and manufactured homes, many Realtors who list manufactured home on a permanent foundation will list it in the MLS as a ‘regular' home.

I have not taken the time to weed through this list of 716, to see how many manufactured homes there are, but I am certain there are a few. I can say the lowest priced home currently listed in the MLS is a $125,000 senior condo on Palm (MLS #H730456) and the most expensive piece of property is a wonderful estate at the end of Esplanade, being offered for $2,200,000 (MLS#103905).

I can tell you what is not included and that is a good percentage if not most of the homes listed with agents from outside our valley. The reason is all MLS's charge a fee to list a home for non-member agents. So, let's say an agent from Temecula takes a Hemet listing, chances are they will only list their listing in the Temecula MLS and not the Hemet MLS. This is not only a disservice to the seller of the home, but the buying public as well, since local Realtors typically do not spend the time nor do they typically have ready access to other MLS systems. I'll discuss this at a later time.

So, back to my analysis of the current inventory level of homes in Hemet. We now know there are 716 homes for sale in Hemet. Next, I check to see how many homes have sold in the last 2 months. Between 8/30/2006 and today, 10/30/2006 I find a total of 189 homes have closed escrow. The least expensive (MLS #H729505) is another senior condo, this time on Santa Fe and it sold for $115,000. The most expensive home that sold in the last 2 months (MLS #H725950) is in the east end of the valley on Rim Road and sold for $799,900.

So, the next part of the equation is to divide the number of homes sold (189) into the existing inventory (716) and I get 3.788. Since my numbers represent a 2 month supply of sales, I need to multiply the 3.788 by 2 in order to realize we currently have a 7.576 inventory of homes for sale in Hemet.

So, what does this mean to you? It means that if you are going to list your home with the intentions of selling it soon, you have to price it to sell. You cannot just put your home on the MLS and a sign in the yard and expect a pack of buyers to find their way to escrow - it just is not going to happen that way anytime soon.

If you would like information about the specifics of your home and how it fits into the inventory scheme of the current market, please give me a call and I'll be more than happy to run the numbers for you - no hassle.

John Occhi, Hemet Realtor
951.443.6259