March-to-April Comparison

by | Apr 28, 2011 | Same-House Sales, Thinking of Buying?, Thinking of Selling? | 10 comments

What has been the historical change in sales between March and April?

These are the MLS detached sales and average $/sf for NSDCC – La Jolla to Carlsbad:

Year March April
2001 254/$280 260/$289
2002 385/$294 329/$290
2003 292/$334 323/$321
2004 282/$409 362/$417
2005 286/$457 282/$488
2006 244/$497 245/$486
2007 263/$441 273/$457
2008 147/$478 194/$454
2009 118/$390 172/$388
2010 216/$395 230/$375
2011 236/$372 178/$377

There are always late reporters, and the last couple of days of the month are the strongest – but it looks like this year we could break the recent trend of April having more sales than March.

Could be due to lack of inventory, OPTs, falling demand, and/or buyer disgust?

10 Comments

  1. clearfund
    clearfund on April 28, 2011 at 8:08 am

    My take is that it isn’t the OPTs or the reduced inventory but rather the high “OPT:Inventory Ratio” coupled with a depleted, reduced buyer pool (buy a home and stay, vs buy/sell/buy/sell/buy…).

    when everything you see are OPTs it gets old really fast.

  2. shadash
    shadash on April 28, 2011 at 8:15 am

    clearfund,

    I couldn’t agree with you more.

  3. wifey
    wifey on April 28, 2011 at 8:29 am

    It is testimony to how precise the demand is. Buyers are well-educated on value.

  4. Kardashianians
    Kardashianians on April 28, 2011 at 9:07 am

    Well said clearfund.

    And all the bad news the media circulates helps to create a sense of uncertainty which hinders some buyers from making the jump. The fact that there seems to be no clear solution to the housing problem adds to that uncertainty. Home buyers are also investors; and investors loathe uncertainty.

  6. Mozart
    Mozart on April 28, 2011 at 9:27 am

    Yep, depleted Buyer pool. It just doesn’t make sense to buy or sell right now.

  7. Local Boy
    Local Boy on April 28, 2011 at 9:39 am

    Jim-

    How do the Active/Pending Ratios look–It could be lack of supply (or at lest GOOD supply)!

  8. Jakob
    Jakob on April 28, 2011 at 2:37 pm

    Well at least more houses are selling now than 2009….

    Actually I’m surprised the numbers are still this strong compared to the boom years. Looking at March, the last complete month of stats, the number of houses sold hasn’t really dropped that much since the frenzy years. That’s kind of surprising.

  9. Jake
    Jake on April 28, 2011 at 3:47 pm

    There is nothing on the horizon that will increase demand other than lower prices and this generally means significantly lower, unless the house is super prime location. It is just that simple.

    If you happen to catch Bernarke’s “press conference” yesterday the look on his face tells you all you want to know about the future of the economy.

  10. Thaylor Harmor
    Thaylor Harmor on April 28, 2011 at 6:25 pm

    Wouldn’t the inventory be poor until the developers start making new homes?

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