The Word For The Day: Stablilization

A couple of reports over the last few days have added a glimmer of home that the U.S. Housing Market is showing signs of stabilization.

I will get to the reports further in the post after the Alameda Real Estate update. Inventory for Alameda rose to highest level since March 22. I pull the numbers every Sunday, to keep the comparison consistent and the number of homes for sale reached 179 units. I checked again this morning and we reached 180 units.

The Condo/Townhome market rose this week to a 16 week high. The interesting thing is that 13 of these property types are listed for over $500,000.

I think that rising inventory in Alameda is a good thing, as long as they are not distressed. I interprete it as people are now comfortable with selling their home and are ready to put them on the market. In the handful of sales for July, 50 percent of them sold at or above the list price. This is a good sign for stablization.

Inventory Data (More Post Below)

. . 7/19/2009 . Total 179 . 94501 146 . 94502 33 . SFR 105 . Condo 44 . Multi-Family 28 . Short Sale 9 . Foreclosure 13 . Price Reductions 61 . High List $2,345,000 . Low List $215,000 .

Another positive sign is Nattional Housing starts jumped 3.6% in June, the second consecutive rise in new building activity. June sales came in at a 582,000 annual rate, the strongest showing since last November. The government also looked back at May and revised its starts up as well, from 532,000 to 562,000. This rising trend in new-home construction could be sustained. Permits for future ground breaking rose to 8.7 percent in June, to a 563,000 unit pace.

Released today was a report by to ZipRealty Inventory Data that revealed the U.S. housing market is showing signs of stabilization with a drop in the number of Multiple Listing Service (MLS)-listed homes for the twelfth consecutive month. These inventory drops have been in places where foreclosures have been high. This is a very good sign.

The number of single family homes and condos listed for sale according to MLS data decreased in June from May by 2.1 percent, bringing the total number of active listings in 28 major U.S. markets to 696,858, according to national real estate brokerage ZipRealty.

Additionally, ZipRealty tracked an increase in the median list price in the 28 markets to $270,440 in June from $270,027 in May. Despite the sequential increase the median list price still decreased 2.72 percent when compared to June 2008.

Other highlights from ZipRealty's Housing Inventory Index, compiled from local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data, for June include:

• San Francisco/Bay Area 19,372 First time under 20,000 listed homes since December 2006
• San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, pointing toward a stabilization in
  those areas
• California is seeing the most dramatic inventory declines with massive
  year-over-year inventory reductions: Los Angeles saw a 53.9 percent
  decrease year-over-year while Bakersfield/Fresno tracked a 56.2 percent
  decrease
• While South Florida has substantially fewer homes for sale than last summer, housing inventory there is plentiful. For example Miami has 27.1 percent more homes listed for sale compared to Los Angeles even though Miami has a significantly smaller population than Los Angeles
• Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Phoenix all recorded a decline in inventory which we believe may have contributed to some homes receiving multiple bids
• Median list prices have flattened or increased in Las Vegas, Phoenix,
  

Changes in National Markets
Austin 10,220 1.4% -7.4%

Bakersfield 6,419 1.5% -56.2%

Baltimore 9,347 -0.1% -7.6%

Boston 36,611 -8.2% -5.8%

Charlotte 20,744 0.4% -7.3%

Chicago 74,576 0.2% -13.6%

Dallas-Ft. Worth 37,213 -0.6% -11.9%

Denver 18,770 5.1% -16%

Houston 29,142 2.2% -21.8%

Jacksonville 11,236 0.2% -18%

Las Vegas 14,014 -10.3% -38.7%

Los Angeles 44,024 -8.8% -53.9%

Miami 55,969 -4.8% -31.8%

Minneapolis-St. Paul 23,988 -0.3% -21.8%

Norfolk/Virginia Beach 11,937 0.7% -3.7%

Orange County 8,898 -4.5% -41.8%

Orlando 24,564 -6% -26.8%

Philadelphia 36,504 0.8% -5.5%

Phoenix 30,868 -7.2% -38.8%

Raleigh/Durham 15,695 -0.3% -5.3%

Richmond 9,129 1.3% -6.6%

Salt Lake City 16,775 -0.5% -12.2%

San Francisco Bay Area 19,372 -6% -45.3%

Sacramento 15,520 0.7% -29.3%

Seattle 32,596 1.2% -18.8%

Tampa 41,309 -3.6% -22.8%

Tucson 5,694 -3.6% -22.8%

Washington, D.C. 35,724 -3.3% -31.4%

To view the data from its source you can go to the ZiPRealty Market Conditions blog: http://ziprealty.typepad.com/marketconditions/.