Monday, January 21, 2008

Inventory, a record year ahead

I have noticed there is a wave of new listings hitting the market. Over the holidays there were very few new listings. In the last few weeks though there have been about a thousand new listing. Many of those are listings that expired before the holidays and are now back on the market. Of course this has reset their listing date so the days on market number looks better. I have already run across quite a few properties that are “new” listings, but I remember them a few months ago.

10/2007: 32,380
11/2007: 32,600
01/10/08: 29,829
01/20/08: 30,796

Looking back over 2006 and 2007 listings I see the trend seems to be that an average of 1000 homes per month gets added to the inventory through late summer. The peak inventory from the last couple of years happened in late summer (Sept/Oct). If that trend holds for this year by late summer there will be roughly 42,000 homes on the market come late summer. I suppose that homes could start selling again, reducing that number. What is far more likely to happen is that a deteriorating economy will slow the sales even further. The peak mortgage defaults go through Oct of this year and the process of foreclosing on those homes takes another 9 months. I’m thinking we might hit 50,000 homes by the end of this year

Looking at the homes hitting the market, it’s painfully obvious that most people still think they can get 2005 prices. 90% of the homes I see have zero chance of selling at the price they are listed. Some of the banks are getting more aggressive with the pricing while others are still listing high. With the inventory climbing, the sales numbers continuing to drag along the bottom and financing hard to come by, you have to think the prices will continue to plummet.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, this sucker was listed forever for $550,000. Then it disappeared. Then it reappeared for $495,000. The days on market are different on ZipRealty (517) vs. Redfin (385). EEK! Look around this neighborhood, everything has been on the market forEVER. You'd think people would get a clue. Nope. Waiting, still waiting.

http://www.redfin.com/stingray/do/printable-listing?listing-id=393600

Anonymous said...

0% chance of selling? Aren't you being a little harsh? I give them 0.001% So, make that about 4 houses.

golfer_X said...

Under normal conditions (appreciation of 3.5%), that house would fetch about $230k based on the 97 sales price. That seems reasonable to me. Even if you give them 5% that's still only $250k. They are looking to get 12% at current asking price.

If they think they are going to get $495k for that thing they are smoking the dream pipe

Anonymous said...

I don't understand how the banks can keep on holding their sky-high asking prices for a supposedly "bank-owned" property. Aren't they loosing money by not selling those? I'm still not seeing the average asking price for big Eastvale houses go near $110 a square feet. What's going on? How long can these hold?

Anonymous said...

They can't hold them forever. They must pay the taxes on them, not to mention the other costs involved in holding them. The biggest hurdle right now is probably the auctions. As long as the current crop of dim-bulbs keeps overbidding at the auctions the banks will go that route if the homes don't sell at the sky high asking. Another problem is the realtards that banks rely on to price the properties. The last problem is the banks are worried about tanking the market. They have a lot of other properties in the queue and lowering they are fearful that dropping the price too quickly will make those properties worth even less.

BTW I have seen a few Eastvale homes in the low teens. I found 1 listed right at $100 sq/ft but it was a 5000 s/f monster. But you are right, most are still looking to get $150 s/f or more.

Anonymous said...

I don't think we've hit bottom yet, but the banks seem to be holding their lines.

Anonymous said...

I saw a couple of homes sell this week in the Retreat. The Beazer model homes were sold this week, one for $817K and I'm not sure about the other one but it was a similar price. These units included the furniture and I think both had around $300K of upgrades and had prime golf course views. These homes were for sale originally for 1.2 and 1.3 million I think. Wow, prices have gone down... hopefully these accelerated falling prices will continue.

Anonymous said...

I like the retreat but the tax rate is sky high, the HOA is $340/mo and there are more foreclosures and pre-foreclosures in there that anywhere else in Corona (on a percentage basis). It's brown-lawn central. Those people the just bought are still going to lose a ton of dough. Everytime a new REO hits the market in there the price seems to drop $50k. The new leader is $589k.

Anonymous said...

Any one knows how the Preserve in Chino is holding up? I'm still looking for bargains.