John Cooke of Prudential has emailed me the current inventory as of July 31st (click on image to enlarge).
What are we to make of this? Eh? Inventory's up, but we all knew that. I can find some comfort in the fact that the market is not entirely dead. From June 1 to July 31 this year 115 units (30 condominiums, 85 single family houses) went to contract. Among single families,six were priced at $7,000,000 and above (no guarantee what they sold for)three in the $5's, seven in the $4's, nine in the 3's, eighteen in the 2's and twenty-two below $2MM.
Ignoring that June-July isn't our busiest period (nor is August, come to that), we can extrapolate to some dismal figures if we're so inclined. According to Cooke, we have 76 homes available priced above $8MM. Take the 3 contracts we actually had in the two month period, multiply by 6 (that would yield 18) and we have a 4.2 year supply of mega mansions. Boo hiss.
The $7-8MM range isn't so bad - about a year's inventory, assuming no one else decides to list their house in this range for the next 12 months.
We saw no contracts in the $6-7 range so John's inventory of 33 either suggests an infinite supply, you should drop your house out of this price bracket or hope that things will get better come September - probably some combination of all three, I suspect.
$5-6MM, we have 33 houses to unload, and 1.8 years to do so.
$4-5MM, 43 units, 1 year's inventory.
$3-4MM, 62 units, 1/2 year inventory - price your house here!
$2-3MM 105 units, 1 year's inventory
$1-2 139 units -not so bad, but don't count on moving next month.
I repeat, June and July are usually slow months so we can hope for a rejuvenated market come fall. If so, this inventory will shrink faster than I've just extrapolated. I'd feel better about predicting such happy news if the credit market were stronger, Russia weren't invading Georgia (that's Europe Georgia, lest you totally panic) and there weren't an election coming. But all these interesting things are happening, so I'm guessing we'll see a period of hesitation among buyers as they wait to see how things sort out. Bad news for sellers and real estate agents, but what are you gonna do?
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2 comments:
Chris,
One of the Big RE office claim they have most of the Market Share by displaying a pie of inventory - for sure its tweaked!!!!!!
According to Disraeli (or Mark Twain, take your pick) there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics. I know that my own manager gnashes her teeth whenever she sees that firm's ads because it just ain't so. But it makes for a colorful page, no?
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