The red line shows how many homes were put on the market in St. Paul, MN each week since the begining of the year. The blue line shows how many homes received offers on them that were accepted by the seller. Some of these have already closed, and others are pending, which means the seller has accepted the offer and they are scheudled to close.
I use these charts to show the relationship between how many homes are put on the market and how many are getting offers. In 2007 the two lines went in opposite directions, more and more homes were put on the market but fewer, and fewer got offers each month. Our local inventory of homes on the market just kept climbing. This chart shows that the lines are both going in the same direction, but there is still more listing activity than there is buying activity. The inventory of homes on the market is much lower than it has been at any time in the last two years. There are currently 1760 homes on the market in St. Paul Last year at this time there were than twice as many homes on the market.
It is still very much a buyers market but the selection of homes to buy has been shrinking each month. Some buyers are having trouble finding that perfect home.
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I have noticed that while the number of houses available in my preferred area seems adequate, the number of “interesting houses” has dropped. Lots of junky places, nothing that I’d want, without further price declines.
My bet is that the price bottom will be established in the ugly/cruddy houses first, when they hit the rental-cashflow level.
And check out that Dow – it broke 7000 much faster than I had predicted.
I hate to call house cruddy but what you are saying is what I am seeing. I don’t live in a palace but I would call my home average and I am not finding average type homes on the market. I sold one a couple of weeks ago that I have to say is above average and it was only on the market for 12 days. My clients thought it was priced to high and so they offered less and it closes on Wednesday. I am noticing that the people who get what they want are not afraid to make a lower than list price offer on the home they want. If they had waited for the price to go down someone else would have beat them to it.
It would be interesting to see if this is a trends or if the drop in available inventory was part of the foreclosure moratorium. We saw a similar drop in the Atlanta GA inventory, but sales declined as well.
It’s interesting that offers have dropped of a little in St. Paul. In most places the offers are going up, we’re having a lot of problems with getting people approved though.