April Housing Supply Outlook

The April Housing Supply Outlook is ready to rock. That's code for "we just put it up on the website, so you should read it n' stuff, or whatever."

As usual, here's a quick list of what to watch for, in the interest of making your time with this large and complex report as efficient and productive as possible.

• Remember all that talk about the record number of houses on the market and the ridiculous plethora of inventory that buyers could linger over and slowly cherry-pick from? That was then and this is now. The total number of homes on the market today compared to the same time a year ago is only 4.2 percent higher—a much lower number than we've seen over the last three years.

• If you compare the number of homes for sale today with the same time a year ago, five of the eight price ranges we track actually have less on the market. Only the three price ranges under $190,000 have more on the market now than they did a year ago. Home sellers who are priced at $190,000 or above actually have less competition for buyers this year than they did last year.

• The condo market continues to show early signs of bottoming out. Inventory is down and prices are stablizing after two years of decline. With that said, sales of condos remain sluggish and likely won't spike dramatically upwards anytime soon.

Click here for the full April Housing Supply Outlook.

Comments

[Troy]

How many of the home sales < $200K are foreclosure pickups? If the foreclosures were omitted from the data set, would even the lower brackets have negative numbers are far as home sales, etc.?

[Jeff Allen]

An excellent question, Troy and a tough one to answer with complete accuracy.

Anecdotally, I'm sure many agents (and their clients) would attest that the growth in activity in the lower price ranges very likely has something to do with the increase in foreclosures. But I don't have a hard-and-fast number I can provide you on that subject, unfortunately.