Madison Guilford Clinton Killingworth Westbrook Real Estate Inventory Report for Week Ending 9/29/2007

Inventory Report for 9/8/07, Madison Guilford Clinton Killingworth Westbrook Connecticut - Real Estate Market Data

Tom Burland http://www.ct-shore-homes.com/

This is an update to my previous report noting this past week's activity.

This week inventory has falled to 705 showing a stable to downward trend which continues to be encouraging, however the weakness in under-contract and on deposits also continues. At the current pace of on deposits there are still the equivilent of 10 months of inventory. There could be many reasons for this the most logical would be the continued negative press the housing market has received coupled with a wider concern about the economy. Jim Cramer didn't help much with his advice to buyers....but he also left out 1/2 the economic driver in the mix. For those sellers who don't really need to sell and can stay in place for a few more years backing out of the market might also be a wise decision. However, if you are selling and then buying you typically won't lose value in the overall sum of the two transactons.

For buyers looking for a medium to long term investment 5-10 years this is still a very good time to buy. Most home sellers have priced their homes reasonably and as you can see from the price change numbers, price adjustments almost equal new listings. As with the stock market, it is difficult to call the low point in the market until it has passed. For those looking to hold their home for 5-10 years you have captured a significant price reduction and history proves that over the long term you will see a good appreciation of property value. While the market may adjust more, you should begin to think about locking in your savings. The real determinant of price ends up being supply and demand. Because inventories are significantly higher than historical levels (although lower than last year) and for the past 2 years homes coming on the market are significantly higher than normal levels, one can assume that a significant portion of the population does not have to sell right now. Over night that over supply condition can evaporate, prices will stabilize and if demand is greater than supply, prices will being to increase.

We need several more weeks of inventory decline before we can really mark a "tipping point", but for those optimists out there, this week's news is good.

New Listings are just that - recently listed properties "new" to the market - in reality some percentage of these are a re-contracting of expired listings.

Deposits show properties under contract that have cleared contingencies - near real time reflection of buyer activity.

Under Contract- are real time reflections of actual transactions, these are contracts written in the past week that have some contingencies involved.

Closed -are properties that have the total transaction completed in the past week, generally these are contracts written 45 to 60 days earlier.

Expireds - are properties that were on the market that didn't sell.

Price Changes - generally in this type of market are properties where list price has been reduced. This usually occurs after a property has been on the market for some time with little traffic and/or no or unacceptable offers.

Now these are general market statistics, in all of these towns there are discrete segments that may be behaving differently. One example of a segment is price range, another is location in town, another is style or number of bedrooms etc. Realtors are equipped to interpret this data for customers to make sure properties are positioned correctly and offers make sense in the current market.