TIm – Using IE 8 with 3 gig Ram. Vista OS. Loads perfectly for me. I would suspect the 1 gig Ram would be constraint enough to slow the loading. Thanks again for these charts.

If you had slow times and are willing to send me some info, I’d be much appreciative. Drop a note with how long the vizes took to load, your browser type and internet connection to efields_at_tableausoftware.com.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s my summary:

http://english.people.com.cn/200507/21/images/0721.jpg

SRS is definitely not for the faint of heart but if you enjoy trading as much as me it can’t be beat. In fact all the financials from BAC to C have such a wide intraday spread its the perfect time to trade actively.

Mkts are getting clocked overseas. BAC giving alot back by the time this is done.

Zions bank (ZION) getting hit hard on huge losses AH in Commercial. SRS will run.

This is Real Estate. Fortunes are made and lost in a matter of hours. Deals are negotiated into the billions of dollars. A few million in paid commissions is made up in a few months, some times minutes of ownership. It may take years to get something built, but there are dollars to be made and lost along the way.

This is Real Estate worth watching. You home’s value may depend on where that Wal Mart goes in or if South Center closes.

Trading in SRS is something akin to handling dynamite. A few words come to mind: Explosive, volatile, dangerous.
I own some, and as the say in the real estate biz ” Not for the faint of heart.”

Oh, I’m not suggesting in the least that we’re done bottoming. Just that it’s getting closer.

Certainly looks to me like prices will be turning around soon in SoCal. 1.8 MOS in the 250-500K range.

http://lansner.freedomblogging.com/2009/04/20/demand-for-oc-homes-back-at-2005-levels/19395/

It seems like that number months supply fror the lower end is really low compared to two-years ago.
I am skeptical that the averages listing is only 2.34 months for home under $1M.

I don’t really consider the market a Sellers market until it hits 3 month or less. Between 3 and 6 months is a more Balanced market.

Certainly looks to me like prices will be turning around soon in SoCal. 1.8 MOS in the 250-500K range.

http://lansner.freedomblogging.com/2009/04/20/demand-for-oc-homes-back-at-2005-levels/19395/

Good link.

I suspect they are closer to the bottom as well – but I think one thing missing from that analysis is the fact that the faucet on foreclosures was basically shut down for the last 3 months. So the claim that “there is only 19 days of foreclosure inventory” is probably highly misleading. It probably has more to do with an artificial cap on supply than it does increased demand.

now that it has been removed – it will be interesting to see how things start to unfold.

LOL…yeah…go ahead and ignore all those “stated income” option ARMs.

Median may rise but that will be because banks will be continuing their rampage through the nicer areas and will be selling the nicer homes…for less.

Much less.

Cool charts, thanks for putting this together.

I predict thru this “spring selling” season, we will see the biggest drops for some time to come. The month to month numbers (based on median etc) are a little too noisy, I prefer using Case Schiller, since it provides a more accurate picture. Anyways, the last CS numbers had Seattle down 20% in 18 months from peak. I am predicting that we will be at 35% down 30 months from peak and that will be the end of the biggest drops. They drops will stabilize at around 40% from peak in pure dollar terms.

Typically I think that would mean prices will have rolled back enough to account for 3-4% gain in housing prices from around Y2K/2001. Of course anyone who purchased from that period onwards is officially underwater and yes, people will be stuck in their homes for years to come.

All those people who purchased houses from 2003 onwards (especially 2004, 05 and 06 since those years saw even bigger jumps) will desperately want to sell and will either foreclose (if they lose a job etc).

For some years, the buyer-seller dividing line may be just 4 months of supply. That’s because people dont have enough money for 10-15% down and banks certainly wont be making any ninja loans in this generation.

http://lansner.freedomblogging.com/2009/04/20/demand-for-oc-homes-back-at-2005-levels/19395/

What you say is plausible … but this could also just be seasonality effects skewing the stats. To me, the key is what the numbers say in August/September and where the market goes after the spring. We’re still seeing weaknesses in the job market (i.e. city and UW cuts), so I’m not sure we’re done bottoming.

We just signed a year lease on the house we’re renting now. If we get another 15% drop by April 2010, we’ll be very well positioned to put 20% down on a 500K house that today would cost 580K or so. That’s the dream, anyway. Plus it gives us time to line up contractors, realtors, etc….

We’re thinking of buying in February next year because it’ll be dark (if it looks good in February, it’ll look GREAT later) and because we want to have a couple of months of overlap between closing on the new house and bailing out of the old house. (Remodeling window, basically.) Be interesting to see whether February sucks due to people waiting until spring to list….

Does it mean that since the Months of Supply is lower that sellers will be raising prices, or is it simply an indicator that sellers haven’t been able to sell and have pulled their listings, and/or are renting the homes out?

If I recall correctly, there was a period from about early ‘06 to mid ‘07 where we were officially in buyers market territory, where sales had slowed and inventory was climbing, yet prices continued to rise.
So are we heading towards the reverse of that now? Is it possible for sales to increase, inventory to shrink, and prices continue to drop?
I think so. Not as a long term thing, but if sales do pick up and inventory declines, it probably means that the price drops may end at some point . But we’re not there yet, as sales haven’t picked up, despite what a lot of real estate agents are claiming. There is a lot more activity, there are a lot more people looking, we’re closer to the bottom, but….