On last Friday’s delistings update post, a reader requested that I provide a view of the data showing cumulative year-long numbers.
So, here it is:
What stands out to me is how relatively stable the number of new listings has been through the past eight years, varying less than 20% from the lowest year (2008) to the highest (2001). Compare this to stale listings, which experienced an increase of 282% from 2005 to 2008.
Here are the total variances for each of the four indicators charted above:
Stale Listings: 281%
New Listings: 19%
Delisted: 183%
Sales: 81%
Note that all we’re doing here is adding up the monthly totals. This means that sales and delistings are only counted once, whereas a home that sits on the market for five months would count as a “stale listing” five times in the yearly total. However, this is not enough to explain away the entire massive variance in stale listings from 2005 to 2008.
In 2005, the largest number of stale listings in any single month was 3,081 in November. In 2008, stale listings peaked at 8,862 in August.
In a way, when we talk about stale listings, we’re really measuring another form of supply and demand. But when it comes to listings, it would appear that stale listings will be a more telling indicator of when the housing market has truly stabilized than the number of sales or delistings.