We’ve seen in the past that there is some relationship between the amount of homes for sale, and the frenzy in the marketplace. The bigger the inventory, the more cautious the buyers are in their search, and when there isn’t much for sale, buyers tend to get more anxious.
Here is raw data for detached and attached MLS listings for the first nine months of each year:
| Year | # of Solds | Total # of listings | Ratio | Cost-per-sf |
| 2000 | 27,489 | 39,273 | 0.70 | $172/sf |
| 2001 | 26,823 | 42,268 | 0.63 | $210/sf |
| 2002 | 29,798 | 39,646 | 0.75 | $226/sf |
| 2003 | 32,219 | 42,167 | 0.76 | $265/sf |
| 2004 | 32,624 | 49,020 | 0.67 | $350/sf |
| 2005 | 31,813 | 55,370 | 0.57 | $379/sf |
| 2006 | 23,557 | 63,204 | 0.37 | $376/sf |
| 2007 | 20,022 | 58,037 | 0.34 | $360/sf |
| 2008 | 20,752 | 51,501 | 0.40 | $277/sf |
| 2009 | 25,512 | 41,395 | 0.62 | $223/sf |
| 2010 | 24,836 | 43,591 | 0.57 | $242/sf |
Here is how the sales and total listings compare visually. It isn’t a perfect relationship, pricing and exotic mortgages probably played a bigger role over this same time period. But over the last two years when pricing and mortgages have been relatively tame, the ebb and flow of sales have tended to move with the inventory – we’ll see how it transpires over the next few months/years:
The withdrawn listings in previous years are deleted by Sandicor, so instead of including the 1,688 withdrawns this year, I used the same 140 from 2009. Previous years show 1, 2, or 3 withdrawns.
Orange County will have a half-million-dollar housing market again by 2012, and home sales volume will rebound by a whopping 43% over the next two years, according to the latest UCLA Anderson Forecast for the O.C. housing market.
http://lansner.ocregister.com/2010/10/27/ucla-o-c-home-prices-to-surge-49/86028/
The folks at UCLA must think interest rates for a 30 yr mortgage will be going down to 0% in 2016.
SMC,
No, they believe the reflation efforts will be effective and normal people will be making 200K for light clerical work. Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but seriously wage inflation fixes the entire deflation mess. Too bad we’d have to destroy the value of our currency to do it.
You get to choose one, strong currency, or expensive housing. Which do you think they’ll choose?
Chuck