January 2011 Real Estate Statistics - What they mean!

January 2011 Existing Home Sales

The Numbers and what they mean to you.

Existing Home Sales for January 2011 were modestly UP (+2.7%) vs. December 2010's substantial increase (from prior month at +12.5%).

Annually this works out to 5.36 million units based upon January SOLD stats vs. 5.22 million annually when based upon December's reported sales..

Existing Home Inventory (houses listed for sale) dropped by 5.1% to 3.38 million home units listed. With current sales and sales predictions, this equates to a monthly inventory reported to be 7.5 months. This follows the existing trend of improvement (reduction in total inventory) over prior periods. The trend is encouraging in many ways.

TWO VERY INTERESTING BITS OF DATA (IMO worth rereading and reposting):

1. CASH SALES accounted for 32% of all home sales reported. This is an ALL TIME HIGH and is more than 3 times the average. Investor mania in full bloom. Values in the market are the best I've seen.

2. FORECLOSURES and SHORT SALES accounted for 37% of all home sales reported. More to come I believe.

Some areas where foreclosures make a significant % of all homes sold:
Nevada - 57% of homes sold were Foreclosures or Short Sales
Arizona - 49%
California - 44%
Florida - 36%

We are still one of the areas little affected by distressed sales. We have foreclosures, but the numbers (at least to date) are relatively small when com pared to the really ugly markets like the big 4 above.

Speaking of foreclosures. The Silver City Foreclosed Home HOTSHEET is rocking and rolling, and the feedback has been great. Thanks for the kind words and input. My servers can handle a few more subscriptions to the free list, but YOU NEED TO ACT SOON. Getting notification by email when any new Foreclosed listings come on the market is what the Hotsheet is about.

There are a few free spaces left for the Silver City RESIDENTIAL HOTSHEET (my most popular email notification tool) and I've a bunch of free subscriptions left for the LAND and RANCH HOTSHEET. You may request any HOTSHEET subscription by clicking the appropriate link.

More Down Side perhaps.. The average price of the existing home sold was slightly lower than the prior months average. This negative trend in average sale price remains in tact. : (