Below are a few quick charts to update the San Diego housing supply and demand picture for August.
For the second month post-stimulus, existing home sales fell:
However, “pending” sales (as opposed to closed sales above) actually notched upward, implying that closed sales could rise next month:
Inventory continued the rise that has been underway all year:
But due to the rise in pending sales, months of inventory actually fell a wee bit, still hovering at about 5.5 months. Six months’ worth of inventory has tended to mark the line between upward and downward pressure on prices:
The rise in pending sales could be an early signal that August’s sales decline overshot a bit, and that the natural, non-stimulated rate of sales — while lower than during the peak stimulus months — is not all that slow after all. If true, that would be a positive for the market, especially because solid demand would offset the seemingly inexorable rise in supply. But we will need a couple more months of data before we can get a read on what the natural rate of demand really is.
Please contact Rich Toscano directly at rtoscano@pcasd.com and follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/richtoscano.