The N.A.R. will be releasing the existing-home sales number tomorrow, and a rout is expected.
The consensus is that August sales improved over July’s number, but they think the year-over-year stats could plunge. The press will focus on any negativity, and call it catastrophic.
Lately there have been numerous reports that the shadow inventory is somewhere between 3 to 8 million homes, but after so many people say it, the impact has become muted. Can we sex those up a bit?
I think soon (any day now) we are going to hear an eight-figure estimate from one of these so-called “experts’ – that the shadow inventory is OVER 10 MILLION HOMES! Because there is no way of knowing the exact count, why not?
It’ll likely come from Rick at RealtyTrac, and it’ll be the new scare.
If the motivated sellers bite, and dump on price to salvage what they can before the headlines get any worse, it’ll be great for buyers.
Here are the SD County MLS sales numbers and percentage changes for August, all property types:
| Month | # of Sales | $-per-sf | DOM |
| Aug 2009 | |||
| Jul 2010 | |||
| Aug 2010 |
Sales: Month-over-Month = +1%, Year-over-Year = -4%
Pricing: Month-over-Month = -1%, Year-over-Year = +3%
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
North SD County Coastal (La Jolla to Carlsbad)
| Month | # of Sales | $-per-sf | DOM |
| Aug 2009 | |||
| Jul 2010 | |||
| Aug 2010 |
Sales: Month-over-Month = -4%, Year-over-Year = -5%
Pricing: Month-over-Month = +1%, Year-over-Year = -4%
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that our percentage stats will be better than America’s.
NAR reports SD stats:
Sales: -1.0%
Price: +2.4%
The SD sales precentage was the best of the 19 MSAs they have on their website, and only four of 19 had single-digit declines in sales.
15 of 19 MSAs had double-digit percentage declines in sales.
But they are reporting national sales were up 7.6%?
U.S. existing home sales rose in August as housing markets struggled to stand unaided after the expiration of a popular tax credit for home buyers, but activity remained severely depressed from levels preceding the country’s most severe downturn in modern history.
Sales climbed 7.6 percent to an annual rate of 4.13 million units, the National Association of Realtors said on Thursday.
Forecasters in a Reuters poll had been looking for a 8.4 percent increase.
The August sales pace was the second lowest since 1997 after July’s revised 3.84 million level, which had posted a record one-month drop after the tax credit ended.
And I thought Carmel Valley was hard to figure out. Check out Philly. Prices are up 6.8% year over year and sales are down over 25%. Shouldn’t be that hard for folks there to put 2 and 2 together….
I’ve had some stats courses in my day (I won’t say how many years ago, ehem) and generally if your data are not behaving reasonably (don’t fit a standard model) it’s probably because you are clumping together disparate populations. Jim could do a breakdown for SD if he had the copious spare time and probably make the data make more sense. But I suspect rational populations would look something like: Oceanview cliff dwellings (space station wannabes) as separate from Beach bungalows, as separate from RSF, Le Mesa, etc. One of the reasons RSF continues on its own course, data wise, is it most likely is a distinct population. Mixing all the SD data into one pile just makes a mess, as it should, actually. That might be a signal of a bubble, honestly, when the messy pile starts to act as one unit.
Philly is almost certainly has the same thing. If you split the data into more reasonable populations the numbers would make more sense. Aggregated, one or two populations are pulling the average into a weird number. That’s another problem: using average instead of median. Average is subject to getting tweaked badly by outliers.
Agreed, plus add that every month has different houses selling with different sellers, buyers, and agents.
It probably a miracle that the numbers are as similar as they are month after month.
Or they reflect how similar we all are as people?
can you please expand this analysis (for North SD County Coastal) to include:
aug ’06, aug ’07 & aug ’08
thank you
August
NSDCC:
2004: 511, $450/sf, 40 DOM
2005: 472, $458/sf, 50 DOM
2006: 347, $454/sf, 67 DOM
2007: 276, $437/sf, 61 DOM
2008: 310, $399/sf, 67 DOM
2009: 353, $362/sf, 77 DOM
2010: 336, $348/sf, 66 DOM
24% off peak pricing
SD County:
2004: 3,880, $352/sf, 27 DOM
2005: 3,897, $396/sf, 45 DOM
2006: 2,608, $363/sf, 64 DOM
2007: 1,808, $336/sf, 66 DOM
2008: 3,039, $245/sf, 64 DOM
2009: 2,935, $229/sf, 59 DOM
2010: 2,823, $235/sf, 70 DOM
41% off peak pricing
What’s interesting to me is that Piggington’s charts show that higher end homes only went up 30% during the boom while lower end homes went up 100%+. The lower end homes collapsed while the higher end have been sticky. The government might be successful in stagnating the market until inflation catches up. Not that I agree with this method, but I underestimated the level of government interference in our free markets.
Lower end homes were available to a greater population and thus subject to a greater degree of bubble hysteria.
Furthermore, the higher end’s have more resources to draw on and thus more time to wait things out.
Based on looking at the Existing Home Sales chart it would appear that YOY for Sept-Nov 2010 could be off between 25-40% if existing home sales stay around the 4 million unit number we’ve seen the past 2 month. The first tax credit expiration boosted sales up around the 6+ million mark last year during those months.
If the MSM wants to report negative news on housing it looks like their going to get it if they use YoY, if they want to report the positive it will be reported as Month over Month.
The MOM and YOY variations in SD County look like background noise. Without looking, you’re market is probably flat with a typical seasonal pattern. Here in Santa Clara County we’ve been 6-12 months behind you in the REO to SS stabilization process. Our median sale price has been pretty flat over the past few months while our number of closings has dropped due to the lack of bargain basement REOs. I expect our market will flatten out as it continues to track in your footsteps. Distressed sales (REO + SS) account for 30% of our SF closings. Is your percentage higher, lower, or about the same?
It looks like a prety healthy market to me, actually; especially when one considers the stimulus that was directed into the housing market last year. Of course there will be a drop-off after the tax credits, but it’s not nearly as bad as some might have thought.