Dramatically Shrinking Inventory of Existing Home Listings — A Really Positive Top 10 List
Posted by Ted C. Jones on August 28, 2012
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While existing home sales were up in July, perhaps the story line should be focused on the shrinking inventory of homes available for sale, portending sustained price increases. Each month Realtor.org details listing information statistics from 146 markets. Just two of the 146 markets had a year-over-year increase in the number of listings—with all 144 remaining showing a decline.
The July data show that overall, the number of listings are down slightly more than 19 percent in the U.S. as an aggregate. The largest year-over-year declines in the number of listings saw drops of more than one-third in the total number of listings, while Oakland, California, plunged 59.3 percent. See the table below for the top ten cities. Note that eight of the top 10 were located in California.
In 67 of the markets, the year-over-year decline in listings was more than 20 percent, while 130 had reductions of at least 10 percent.
As always, I invoke the “There Is No Such Thing As A National Real Estate Market” — the TINSTAANREM clause — since not all markets are the same. Some are better than others, but when you have a decline in 144 of 146 markets, the trend is assured.
Ted
