I haven’t commented on the monthly NWMLS press release in a while, but this is a good month to get back into the routine. Click here to see the most recent report and view the data at the bottom.
I’ve been hearing words like “shift” and “softening,” as well as “frenetic” and “balanced” recently. Throw in others like “bubble” and/or “correction” and I think of words like “paranoia.” Put them all together and you get something like, “There’s a market shift happening and housing is softening, but it’s still frenetic and we have a long ways to go to being balanced.” Anywho, here’s a couple of quotes from the release I found interesting:
• “Inventory is up and demand has dropped,” reported Robert Wasser, an officer with the board of directors at Northwest Multiple Listing Service. That combination is “a pretty simple economic recipe for a softening market,” he added in commenting on the latest MLS statistics.
• “Although still a quick response market, with more new listings coming on the market during the summer months, we experienced dispersed buyer energy due to the greater availability and selection,” stated J. Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO of John L. Scott Real Estate (my emphasis added).
• “While home prices are still trending above average rates, the pace is moderately slowing as the housing market becomes less frenetic,” OB Jacobi, President of Windermere Real Estate stated, adding, “We have a ways to go before we approach anything close to a balanced market, but we’re certainly trending in the right direction.”
• More from Wasser: “It’s still a seller’s market out there, but I’m seeing signs of a more balanced market on the horizon.”
The release did address new construction (albeit briefly). The gist is local regulations (your government) and process (rules) inhibit growth. Old days, good times I remember…
I think we’re seeing what we usually see this time of year. School is out. Vacations are being taken. Peeps are busy living their lives. I do believe a slight correction is out there waiting for us somewhere, but this won’t be anything like what a lot of us experienced before.
So go sell something.
p.s. We’re up to 1.5 months of supply.
