East Bay Housing Data – Glen’s Numbers through August 2011

The August numbers are in and for the fourth month in a row we’ve seen another slight decrease in inventory, a 9% drop since the end of April. This isn’t typical because we’re usually just starting to back off about this time of year.

We saw nearly a 32% increase last year during the same period. The months supply for the combined 38 city area that I track is now 3 months, slightly below normal.

Our Pending/Active Ratio has increased slightly to 1.06, again slowly returning towards a “normal” market range. Keep in mind that this number is overstated due to the large number of short sales that remain in pending status for longer periods than normal.

Distressed properties, (REOs and Short Sales), are still a large part of our local markets. Although this is slowly becoming less of a factor with listings.  47% of the active listings, 73% of our pending sales (primarily due to the large number of short sales – 56%), and 49% of the sales over the last 4 months are distressed properties.

From Around the Web…

Last month’s sales fell harder in the higher price ranges: The number of $500,000-plus homes sold dropped 25.4 percent month-to-month and 19.2 percent year-over-year.

“There’s certainly a lot more discretionary buying in the higher price ranges,” said John Walsh, DataQuick president. “A lot of those buyers have the option to just take it or leave it and, lately, it looks like more have been leaving it. There was a lot of uncertainty out there over the economy, home prices and the nation’s future. And that was before the stock market turbulence hit in early August.”

– DQNews: Bay Area Housing Market Takes a Breather

“Home buying will be conservative in the months ahead until we get a sense of which direction this economy is heading,” said Robert Dye, chief economist at Comerica Inc. in Dallas, who forecast a decline for July. “No one wants to buy into a soft housing market. We’ve seen prices remain soft in many areas.”

– Existing home sales unexpectedly dropped in July – Alex Kowalski, Bloomberg News

As always, I’m available if you want to talk about the market, or explore your options for buying, selling or investing in East Bay real estate. You can reach me directly at 510.333.4460.

You can download an entire copy of Glen’s East Bay Housing Numbers Through August 2011 here.