News Flash... Sound the Trumpets... Ring the Bells.... After 14 months of "sitting on the fence", local Orange County CA home Buyers are now starting to jump off that fence and preview homes for sale, make purchase offers and place homes under contract (in escrow). This has been our personal experience and the experience of many other Realtors we have talked with in recent weeks. As additional evidence, traffic from our websites has increased dramatically in the past 3 weeks, and our Months of Inventory Market Statistics graph has shown a marked decrease in the months of inventory.
We have collected the data for the below graph every week since July of 2002'. As can bee seen on the far right side of the graph, the months of inventory has decreased rapidly, which is a result of a dropping inventory of homes for sale and a corresponding increase in the number of homes recently sold. The months of inventory has been hovering around 8 months since July of last year and has just recently dropped down to 6 months.
Another graph we use is a chart showing the number of homes currently for sale in south Orange County California, as compared to the number of homes sold In Escrow. As cyou will note, the inventory of homes for sale has dropped about 30% from a high of 4,500 homes this past summer, to about 3,200 homes today.
What does this all mean you may ask? Well, for one, sales prices will stop decreasing and hold steady. Since about November of 2005', sales prices have gradually dropped and are currently about 7% to 10% lower throughout much of Orange County. These dropping levels of inventory, increased sales and lower asking prices, I predict will put an end to this. We foresee prices holding steady throughout much of the year, and if interest rates hold, we may even see a slight increase in pricing towards the end of this year. If your are a Buyer who has been sitting on the fence waiting for prices to drop or see prices stabilize, this is your window of opportunity to jump in. If you are a Seller, and your home is priced correctly in today's market, you should see an offer soon enough.
If would like more information about the local real estate market, please feel free to contact us at: 949-388-3396 or drop us an email at: Info@SearchOCHomes.com
