Tim,
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I suggest considering a new ratio metric of inventory / closed sales. An article linked by Everett_Tom suggests that it may be worthwhile for predicting real estate price trends.
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I know this is the wrong place for this, but lately the numbering on posts to a thread are changing over at the blog. What was once post #81 is now #72 and such. Is this something you know about? Also the number of posts listed as comments sometimes do not match the actual number of posts I can access. Am I the only one seeing this anomaly?