Making sense of market numbers

In an effort to really understand the state of affairs in my local market, Birmingham/Bloomfield Hills, I decided to do some research of my own. 

I performed a search in our MLS.  I looked at how many homes & condos sold in 2005 in (JUST) Birmingham, Michigan. 

After crunching numbers I've deduced that my market is down just about 10% from last year. Or less 36 sales for 2006.  Yes, it's upsetting.  However, it's a margin that could be made up fairly easy.  If for the remainder of the year, we as a market sold just an extra 9 homes / condos each month, we'd match last year's numbers.  Seems reasonable doesn't it?  I think its feasible!

423 homes/condos sold in 2005. Or an average of 35 homes per month.

This year, year to date 245 homes/condos have sold.  HOWEVER, there are an additional 43 homes/condos that are "pending" in the MLS.  Let's assume that the 43 homes pending will close by September 30^th of this year.  Which I think is a fair assumption.  This would mean that for the first 9 months of this year, 288 homes will have sold.  Or an average of 32 homes/condos per month. 

What I did not take into consideration is the number of homes that will go pending and close prior to September 30^th.  That's about 6 weeks unaccounted for that we can make up some ground.  Maybe the statics will be slightly better. 

What I couldn't really gauge was pricing.  Many of the sales in our fine city are recorded as one dollar.  It makes pulling comps a bit tricky.  I'll save that report for another day.