Weekly Market Activity Report

Remember how we've been saying that the Twin Cities housing market has been getting successively slower in home sales every week since the tax credit ended? Umm, yeah, well that's still happening.

Pending sales for the week ending June 5 were 57.0 percent behind the pace seen a year ago, dropping from 1,226 in 2009 to 527 today. This is the fifth consecutive week-to-week drop in signed contracts. While activity is down across the board, lender-mediated foreclosures and short sales are slowly increasing their market share of sales because traditional home sales have declined sharply. During this week last year, 37.8 percent of pending sales were lender-mediated; this year the share is 43.3 percent.

Thankfully, new supply is not growing in lock-step. The 1,521 new homes placed on the market for the most recent reporting week were 29.6 percent less than last year at this time. This has helped keep the Months Supply of Inventory metric at 6.9 months, down 9.3 percent from May 2009.

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report.

Comments

[Jeff Byrd]

I would have to disagree that the new supply not growing is a good thing. The lower number of new listings coming on the market means the listing inventory is getting stale. In a market with stagnant or declining prices properties are like bread on the shelf at the store, they become stale the longer they sit on the market without price adjustments. No matter how few homes are on the market buyers are not buying overpriced listings that have been on the market for a long time. Without rising values, properties that sit on the market for a long time can’t just wait for the values to rise. Quite the contrary, the longer they are on the market the more likely they are to have their value decrease. New market priced listings are what will drive sales. The increase in the percentage of distressed sales reflects this reality. An increase in new listings in this market may indeed be a good thing for sales. Rates are great, values are good making a good time to buy right. Buyers are well equipped with information and are very savvy today. Put new well priced inventory out there and they will buy.